Verdi: Falstaff
The Royal Opera, 15th May 2012, Mark Pullinger
‘All the world’s 
a jest’ quips Falstaff, kicking off the ‘devil of a fugue’ (to steal from Elgar) which concludes Verdi’s final opera as his characters are packed off to supper. They are no longer in conflict and class distinctions are (briefly?) forgotten in Robert Carsen’s outstanding new Royal Opera production as impoverished aristocracy and the ‘nouveau riche’ are united around the banqueting table. A fugue can be regarded as somewhat old-fashioned, like Falstaff’s concept of ‘honour’ expounded in Act I, but it provides a unifying resolution to the comic twists and turns in the Merry Wives’ bid to serve Sir John with his comeuppance. In this Golden Jubilee year, Carsen shunts the opera to the new Elizabethan age of the 1950s, an updating which works brilliantly, Brigitte Reiffenstuel’s tweeds and scarlet foxhunting jackets replacing traditional doublet and hose. I cannot remember the last time I enjoyed a new Royal Opera production quite so much.
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Juan Diego Flórez
Royal Albert Hall, 8th May 2012, Sebastian Petit
When it was 
announced that Juan Diego Flórez would give his next Rosenblatt recital at the Royal Albert Hall there were many who were quick to doubt his ability to fill the venue in either sense of the word. There are not many opera stars, even at Flórez’s level, who can fill the inhospitable cavern of the “Nation’s Village Hall”. Truth be told there were some empty seats but the house must have been well over three quarters full. One hopes that not too many of them were on a corporate junket and that Rosenblatt’s courage was rewarded.
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Puccini: Madam Butterfly
English National Opera, 8th May 2012, Mark Pullinger
Madam Butterfly is 
one of two operas virtually guaranteed to bring tears to the eyes of this traditionally stony-hearted critic (The Cunning Little Vixen is the other, should you be interested, so Glyndebourne should be on flood alert!). However, throughout this second ENO revival of Anthony Minghella’s classy staging, my tear ducts remained in a state of drought. Why? This is an incredibly stylish, glossy Butterfly, opulently costumed (Han Feng) against a largely bare stage, albeit sleek and lacquered. Michael Levine’s set has a steep rake creating a hill towards the rear over which most of the characters make their entrances and exits, often to spectacular visual effect. Acting is well directed (Sarah Tipple) and truthful; the singing, for the most part, excellent. This is, in short, a highly polished production, so why did it so utterly fail to move me?
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Rodgers: Carousel
Opera North, Leeds, 5th May 2012, Geoffrey Mogridge
The musicals of 
Rodgers and Hammerstein may be too schmaltzy for some tastes but there's no denying their enduring appeal. Director Jo Davies whose production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore for Opera North did much to rehabilitate the piece has now taken on the famously weepy musical Carousel, arguably the schmaltziest of schmaltz - although in my book The Sound of Music would earn the palm by a whisker. And then there's the problem of THAT song - "You'll Never Walk Alone" - hijacked by Gerry and the Pacemakers back in 1963, adopted by Liverpool F.C soon afterwards and ever since then, just about the world's best loved anthem. Stephen Sondheim once said that Oklahoma (the partnership's first great success) is about a picnic whilst Carousel is about life and death - and one might add - a love that is lost.
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Glass: Einstein on the Beach
Barbican Theatre, 4th May 2012, Carla Finesilver
Two women 
sit at a desk, staring at us, motionless apart from their hands tracing quick rhythmic movements in the air. One is reciting poetry, the other interjecting a string of numbers, above a low-pitched organ hum. The woman reciting poetry is doing so in the pleasant but emotionally neutral tone of modern speech-synthesising software; the woman reciting numbers does so with humanity and expression in every one. Something is wrong: poetry woman starts to stutter – not a human stutter, but an android showing the first signs of malfunction. I don’t know what it means, but I’m gripped. And the performance proper hasn’t even begun yet.
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Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier
Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, 4th May 2012, Nicola Lischi
Incredibile dictu, 
Zubin Mehta had never conducted Der Rosenkavalier before this production that marked the inauguration of the 75th edition of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Truth be told, he was scheduled to open the 1989 Maggio with this opera, but became ill and was replaced by Jiri Kout. In any event, it is surprising – to say the least – that the 76 year old maestro, a pupil of Hans Swarowsky in Vienna, and who began his continued professional relationship with the Wiener Philharmoniker in the 1950s, had not tackled this seminal, extremely popular and quintessential Viennese opera. It was worth the long wait.
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Puccini: Tosca
Scottish Opera, Glasgow, 4th May 2012, Kelvin Holdsworth
Scottish Opera’s 
revival of Anthony Besch’s Tosca offers a rewarding evening, though not one without its problems. Vocally, this is a Tosca not to be missed. Unfortunately, most of the evening is marred by insensitive conducting and far too much noise from the pit.
The production itself has been a very successful one and surely owes the company no debts now. This is, believe it or not, the eighth time it has been revived and it has done more globetrotting than Scottish Opera productions usual manage, being seen as far afield as New Zealand and the USA. Such success is based on a solid, confident director who clearly knew what he was doing by updating the action to 1940s fascist Italy. It is immensely pleasing to look at and fits its shiny jackboots perfectly.
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Puccini: La bohème
The Royal Opera, 30th April 2012, Stephen Jay-Taylor
The most 
affecting moment in this, the 24th revival of John Copley’s 1974 staging, occurred after the performance had finished, during the curtain-calls, at the end of which Copley himself was ushered onto the stage, first for a solo bow, and then – with the curtains raised again – presented with an enormous decorated cake in celebration of his fifty years’ activity as a producer at Covent Garden. Tony Hall made an enthusiastic speech in appreciation of Copley’s achievements in the House, closely observed by a silent-but-present Antonio Pappano; and then the director himself rather reluctantly took the microphone to express both his gratitude and astonishment at this unexpected homage
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Wagner: The Flying Dutchman
English National Opera, 28th April 2012, Faye Courtney
I have a 
great deal of empathy with the poor cursed Flying Dutchman. As I traipse around various British and European opera houses I feel doomed to never find a production of Wagner’s early masterpiece that remains truly faithful to the composer’s intentions. I’ve encountered sewing machines in the Covent Garden version, exercise bikes in Munich, a space station in Cardiff and twenty-four refrigerators in Stuttgart but never anything that truly gets to the essential heart of the piece. English National Opera’s interesting new modern dress production by Jonathan Kent is promising but flawed, although the show is redeemed by some magnificent singing and thrilling orchestral playing which ranks among the finest I’ve heard at the Coliseum.
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Mariusz Kwiecien: Slavic Heroes
Mark Pullinger
When the 
Bolshoi brought its controversial production of Yevgeny Onegin to London in 2010 with a Polish baritone in the title role, it seemed rather perverse, a bit like The Royal Opera touring Peter Grimes starring a French tenor. However, the Polish baritone in question was Mariusz Kwiecien, who has the requisite looks and vocal characteristics for the role and seems ready to claim the mantle of ideal interpreter from the shoulders of Dmitri Hvorostovsky. The smouldering Siberian included arias from Onegin on his debut disc, as does Kwiecien, but where Hvorostovsky paired Tchaikovsky with his trademark Verdi, Kwiecien has stayed closer to home with an inventive programme entitled Slavic Heroes.
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Puccini: Turandot
Teatro Carlo Felice di Genova, 22nd April 2012, Nicola Lischi
When this 
revival of Turandot was announced, there was considerable buzz generated by the debuts of two extremely popular (at least in Italy) sopranos, Daniela Dessì in the title role and Mariella Devia as Liù. The excitement was even greater considering that both are “local” glories, hailing from Liguria, the region of Genoa. While Mariella Devia dutifully reported and sang the part of the slave girl, Daniela Dessì communicated to the management of the Teatro Carlo Felice that she was not going to show up only days before the beginning of rehearsals. This time no indisposition was claimed. Simply, the soprano – as she herself said in an interview with the local paper – wished to follow her husband, tenor Fabio Armiliato, on a tour for the presentation of Woody Allen’s latest film, where Armiliato plays a starring role.
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ENO unveils 2012-13 season
ENO recently 
scooped two Olivier Awards (which doubtless tasted even sweeter for being held at the Royal Opera House): the Best New Opera Production for Rameau’s Castor and Pollux and the Outstanding Achievement in Opera award for ‘The Breadth and Diversity of the Artistic Programme’. That breadth and diversity is there in spades for the 2012-13 season, unveiled this morning at the Coliseum. Another bold, risk-taking season lies ahead, headed by two new works, ensuring this is no Mickey Mouse season!
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Handel: Cajo Fabricio
London Handel Festival, 20th April 2012, Miranda Jackson
Battling your way 
through torrential rain on a Friday night to endure no less than five hours on one of the most uncomfortable church pews in London with no refreshments provided and inadequate provision of lavatories may not sound like your idea of fun, but Ensemble Serse’s first performance of Hasse’s Cajo Fabricio since 1733 was one of the best events in this year’s London Handel Festival.
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Opera at the BBC Proms
The unveiling 
of the annual BBC Proms prospectus is always a cause for anticipation, even if, operatically, some of the key events have been open secrets for some time. Among the ‘known unknowns’ is Glyndebourne’s Le nozze di Figaro on 28th August. Conducted by Robin Ticciati, there’s a strong cast led by Vito Priante(Figaro), Lydia Teuscher (Susanna), Sally Matthews soprano (Countess Almaviva) and Audun Iversen (Almaviva). Dinner jackets and tiaras at the ready!
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Weber: Der Freischütz
Barbican, 19th April 2012, Stephen Jay-Taylor
As regular 
readers all know, I spend any amount of my time taking trips down memory lane: now I’m going to pack you off on one instead, and refer you back to my review of Weber’s opera as performed at last year’s Proms. In it, having given an overview of the miserable provision of the greatest pre-Wagnerian German opera on London’s stages, I had this to say:
“Now, of course, after what feels like an eternity of waiting, two Der Freischützes – at least in concert – come along (almost) at once, evidently the operatic equivalent of London buses. Well, perhaps not quite. When Sir Colin Davis conducts the piece next April as part of the LSO’s 2011/12 season at the Barbican, it will be with a seriously heavyweight Wagnerian cast – including Christine Brewer and Simon O’Neill in the leads – and, as written, in German, with the original spoken dialogue (the latter I am assuming: if instead we get the services of some smart-arse narrator, in any language, I will personally commit murder).”
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Donizetti: La fille du régiment
The Royal Opera, 17th April 2012, John E de Wald
La fille du régiment 
premiered in Paris at the Opera-Comique on 11 February 1840. Donizetti had by this point attained preeminence in France, inaugurated largely by the hugely successful premiere of Lucia di Lammermoor in 1837. The popularity of the Italian composer was such that Berlioz, in his predominantly dismissive review of the latter work, wrote: ‘One can no longer speak of the opera houses of Paris, but only of the opera houses of M. Donizetti.’ There is perhaps an element of irony in the ubiquity of Donizetti’s operas in the musical scene of the French capital, yet it is not terribly surprising that his buoyant melodies and virtuosic vocal writing became popular favourites with the public.
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Rihm: Jakob Lenz
English National Opera, 16th April 2012, Miranda Jackson
This was a 
night of high drama. Not only did the redoubtable Andrew Shore make not one but two attempts to drown himself, one within the opening bars of Wolfgang Rihm’s 1979 opera, Jakob Lenz, but we also saw his fantasy of the drowning of a child – a little too realistic for me. When I saw the Flower Maidens in Calixto Bieito’s Parsifal dressed as post-apocolyptic victims of abuse, sporting their fur coats and drawing on their silk underwear, bound with clingfilm and parcel tape, in bright red lipstick, I thought I’d seen it all. But at the first night of Jakob Lenz we witnessed a number of near-death experiences, not just the drowning child and Lenz’s suicide attempts, but Mr Shore slipping on the mud of Annemarie Woods’ set in his frenzy, several old ladies in the front row coming close to being gassed by dry ice and Suzy Cooper, playing the haunting focus of Lenz’s fantasies dicing with death as the elevated platform on which she danced flexed ominously on its ropes.
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Verdi: La traviata
Metropolitan Opera, New York, 14th April 2012, Mark Pullinger
Willy Decker’s 
spare, modern staging of La traviata has graced the stages of Salzburg, Amsterdam and New York over the last eight years, with a number of leading sopranos assuming the role of Violetta. Last night, it was Natalie Dessay’s turn to don the iconic little red dress at the Met. It gives me no pleasure at all to report that it was extremely moving for all the wrong reasons.
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Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius
Barbican, 14th April 2012, John E de Wald
Elgar’s The Dream
of Gerontius is now firmly established in the English tradition of religious choral music. Yet Elgar was himself wary of labelling it an oratorio in the tradition of Handel or Mendelssohn; indeed, the work sits somewhat uncomfortably amidst such a backdrop. On the one hand, there is the unusual nature of its subject matter itself—though the spiritual undertones and poignant music are starkly dramatic, the narrative focus is interiorised and abstract rather than physical. All drama and beauty, all despair and fury, must correspond not with any physical altercation, but rather the passage of a man’s soul from life to death and his ultimate journey before God. To be sure, it is a theme rich with meaning and gravity; nevertheless, it is surely not a facile one to realise dramatically in music.
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Handel: Acis & Galatea/ Beck: Black Water
Co-Opera, Adelaide, 14th April 2012, Sandra Bowdler
Handel’s Acis 
and Galatea was first composed for and staged at Cannons, the stately home of the Duke of Chandos, a friend and patron of the composer, in 1718. Following pirate revivals in London in the 1830s, Handel himself presented a new extended version in 1732 in the King’s Theatre in London. This contained some new characters beyond the original five (Acis, Galatea, Polyphemus, Damon, Coridon), and new material, including Italian arias. Further revisions ensued, mostly in this bilingual form, but the 5th edition published in 1743 represents the work almost as we know it today.
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Massenet: Manon
Metropolitan Opera, New York, 7th April 2012, Dominic Wells
It is almost 
exactly five years that Anna Netrebko took on the role of Manon in Berlin (April 2007), where she was partnered by long-term collaborator, Rolando Villazón – an account immortalised on DVD, conducted by Daniel Barenboim (DG, 2008). Despite being directed by Vincent Paterson – better known for his work with Madonna and other pop stars, and also responsible for Netrebko’s cringe-worthy debut DVD,The Woman, the Voice – that Berlin Manon, set in 1950s Hollywood, works very well both visually and aurally. Many no doubt objected to Manon presented as a pole-dancing Marilyn Monroe in Act IV, but the whole production reflected the egocentric nature of her character, even if it did border on exaggeration at times.
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Verdi: Requiem
Mariinsky at the Barbican, 4th April 2012, Stephen Jay-Taylor
There’s an art, 
clearly much-perfected in St. Petersburg, of making a little go a long way. When Verdi’s grand commemorative musical machine is mounted in London– which it is, with great regularity – you’ll usually find an orchestra of around 90-odd, plus a chorus of anything ranging from 120 to 240. But Valery Gergiev runs a tight ship back home and even more necessarily on tour; and so, both tonight and even more strikingly in last night’s infrastructurally remarkable Parsifal, the Mariinsky’s orchestra numbered no more than 70-odd (with just 46, as opposed to the standard 60, strings) and a chorus of less than 60, tout court. Closely grouped together on the Barbican platform as if huddling together for warmth, you could be forgiven for anticipating that the thinly-assembled forces would produce only a certain amount of sound and no more, at best hopefully gaining in inner-part clarity what they would inevitably lose in volume.
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Wagner: Parsifal
Mariinsky at the Barbican, 3rd April 2012, Mark Pullinger
Shorn of any 
directorial ‘Konzept’, concert performances of Wagner’s music dramas can focus on the real drama in the music. The key work in the Mariinsky’s Holy Week UK tour is, appropriately enough, Parsifal, whose Act III ends on Good Friday. The company’s publicity machine made much of their SACD recording in their promotions leading up to this performance at the Barbican. That recording was very well received in most quarters, although cast with some key non-Russian soloists – most notably René Pape’s Gurnemanz – so how would a roster of singers drawn entirely from the Mariinsky’s ranks fare in Wagner ‘sacred stage festival play’?
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Joan Rodgers & Roderick Williams
Wigmore Hall, 2nd April, John E de Wald
The tradition of 
German Lieder offers one of the archetypal evocations of Romanticism, that past sensibility wistfully suffused with the iconography of Caspar David Friedrich’s solitary adventurer standing boldly before nature, the lone hero consumed by love and an often semi-solipsistic sense of heightened personal emotion. Typically in the hands of the great composers granted voice tonight—Schumann, Brahms, Mahler, Wolf—this lends itself all too readily to a sense of life drawn from anguish, unrequited love, broken hearts, and worldly transience. Though this evening’s recital at the Wigmore Hall spoke to these emotions as all recitals grounded in this tradition must, it was buoyed by a singular sense of gentle humour and vibrancy.
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Verdi: Rigoletto
The Royal Opera, 30th March 2012, Stephen Jay-Taylor
The more 
McVicar shows I see, the more it forcibly strikes me that they are highly regarded not so much for their theatrical conviction or detailed direction, but for the simple reason that they are, for the most part, left in period, for the which relief it’s not so much a case of “much thanks” but of fawningly (and unspokenly) uncritical approval. “Oh, look! Rosenkavalier left in the Rococo! Adriana with actual crinolines! Thank God! No RegieRubbish here!” And it’s a view I both understand and have sympathy with. But – and you knew that was coming – you still have to look closely at the finished result, and ask whether a largely hands-off approach to the all-important matter of setting is actually successful. And here, I think, the vast majority of his stagings fail, visually drab and undifferentiated as so many of them are, based on only patchily effective unit-set designs, and with an almost uncanny inability to realise Act IV of any opera that actually has one (that of his Figaro is a visually incoherent mess; Faust no less so; that of his Aida – admittedly rubbish throughout – spectacularly fails at even the most basic story-telling level at the end; and Adriana’s Act IV is a narrative nonsense, with the important-to-the-plot absent soprano instead apparently having taken up fully-furnished residence backstage at the Comédie Française for all apparently to ignore).
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Mozart: Die Zauberflöte
Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, 27th March 2012, Mark Pullinger
Here was Rome at its 
gladiatorial worst. In Britain – or should that be just London – the only booing you’re likely to hear will be aimed at a director taking his/ her first night curtain call; the most recent – and controversial – being voiced at the new (to the Royal Opera) Rusalka. Similarly, Christof Loy’s production of Tristan und Isolde back in 2009 received vociferous boos from the expensive seats. Never before had I encountered it hurled towards a singer, until last night when Hulkar Sabirova’s ‘Der Hölle Rache’ was greeted with a barrage of booing, not from the ‘posh seats’ but from the Galleria and at decibels which made the recent Covent Garden dissenters appear tame by comparison.
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Handel: Riccardo Primo
London Handel Festival, 27th March 2012, Miranda Jackson
As a critic 
invited to the featured opera in the annual London Handel Festival hot from two excellent productions at the Wigmore Hall and Netherlands Opera I would expect to have to make allowances for young, inexperienced singers. At the Britten Theatre the LHF, in conjunction with the Royal College of Music, provide a showcase for the best of the young talent currently studying at the International Opera School. No less than eleven music coaches are credited in the programme for training these young singers in the refined art of singing opera seria. All those involved in coaching have every right to be proud: all the members of this young cast acquitted themselves admirably.
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Verdi: Falstaff
The Royal Opera, 15th May 2012, Mark Pullinger
‘All the world’s a jest’ quips Falstaff, kicking off the ‘devil of a fugue’ (to steal from Elgar) which concludes Verdi’s final opera as his characters are packed off to supper. They are no longer in conflict and class distinctions are (briefly?) forgotten in Robert Carsen’s outstanding new Royal Opera production as impoverished aristocracy and the ‘nouveau riche’ are united around the banqueting table. A fugue can be regarded as somewhat old-fashioned, like Falstaff’s concept of ‘honour’ expounded in Act I, but it provides a unifying resolution to the comic twists and turns in the Merry Wives’ bid to serve Sir John with his comeuppance. In this Golden Jubilee year, Carsen shunts the opera to the new Elizabethan age of the 1950s, an updating which works brilliantly, Brigitte Reiffenstuel’s tweeds and scarlet foxhunting jackets replacing traditional doublet and hose. I cannot remember the last time I enjoyed a new Royal Opera production quite so much.
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Juan Diego Flórez
Royal Albert Hall, 8th May 2012, Sebastian Petit
When it was announced that Juan Diego Flórez would give his next Rosenblatt recital at the Royal Albert Hall there were many who were quick to doubt his ability to fill the venue in either sense of the word. There are not many opera stars, even at Flórez’s level, who can fill the inhospitable cavern of the “Nation’s Village Hall”. Truth be told there were some empty seats but the house must have been well over three quarters full. One hopes that not too many of them were on a corporate junket and that Rosenblatt’s courage was rewarded.
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Puccini: Madam Butterfly
English National Opera, 8th May 2012, Mark Pullinger
Madam Butterfly is one of two operas virtually guaranteed to bring tears to the eyes of this traditionally stony-hearted critic (The Cunning Little Vixen is the other, should you be interested, so Glyndebourne should be on flood alert!). However, throughout this second ENO revival of Anthony Minghella’s classy staging, my tear ducts remained in a state of drought. Why? This is an incredibly stylish, glossy Butterfly, opulently costumed (Han Feng) against a largely bare stage, albeit sleek and lacquered. Michael Levine’s set has a steep rake creating a hill towards the rear over which most of the characters make their entrances and exits, often to spectacular visual effect. Acting is well directed (Sarah Tipple) and truthful; the singing, for the most part, excellent. This is, in short, a highly polished production, so why did it so utterly fail to move me?
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Rodgers: Carousel
Opera North, Leeds, 5th May 2012, Geoffrey Mogridge
The musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein may be too schmaltzy for some tastes but there's no denying their enduring appeal. Director Jo Davies whose production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore for Opera North did much to rehabilitate the piece has now taken on the famously weepy musical Carousel, arguably the schmaltziest of schmaltz - although in my book The Sound of Music would earn the palm by a whisker. And then there's the problem of THAT song - "You'll Never Walk Alone" - hijacked by Gerry and the Pacemakers back in 1963, adopted by Liverpool F.C soon afterwards and ever since then, just about the world's best loved anthem. Stephen Sondheim once said that Oklahoma (the partnership's first great success) is about a picnic whilst Carousel is about life and death - and one might add - a love that is lost.
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Glass: Einstein on the Beach
Barbican Theatre, 4th May 2012, Carla Finesilver
Two women sit at a desk, staring at us, motionless apart from their hands tracing quick rhythmic movements in the air. One is reciting poetry, the other interjecting a string of numbers, above a low-pitched organ hum. The woman reciting poetry is doing so in the pleasant but emotionally neutral tone of modern speech-synthesising software; the woman reciting numbers does so with humanity and expression in every one. Something is wrong: poetry woman starts to stutter – not a human stutter, but an android showing the first signs of malfunction. I don’t know what it means, but I’m gripped. And the performance proper hasn’t even begun yet.
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Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier
Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, 4th May 2012, Nicola Lischi
Incredibile dictu, Zubin Mehta had never conducted Der Rosenkavalier before this production that marked the inauguration of the 75th edition of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Truth be told, he was scheduled to open the 1989 Maggio with this opera, but became ill and was replaced by Jiri Kout. In any event, it is surprising – to say the least – that the 76 year old maestro, a pupil of Hans Swarowsky in Vienna, and who began his continued professional relationship with the Wiener Philharmoniker in the 1950s, had not tackled this seminal, extremely popular and quintessential Viennese opera. It was worth the long wait.
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Puccini: Tosca
Scottish Opera, Glasgow, 4th May 2012, Kelvin Holdsworth
Scottish Opera’s revival of Anthony Besch’s Tosca offers a rewarding evening, though not one without its problems. Vocally, this is a Tosca not to be missed. Unfortunately, most of the evening is marred by insensitive conducting and far too much noise from the pit.
The production itself has been a very successful one and surely owes the company no debts now. This is, believe it or not, the eighth time it has been revived and it has done more globetrotting than Scottish Opera productions usual manage, being seen as far afield as New Zealand and the USA. Such success is based on a solid, confident director who clearly knew what he was doing by updating the action to 1940s fascist Italy. It is immensely pleasing to look at and fits its shiny jackboots perfectly.
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Puccini: La bohème
The Royal Opera, 30th April 2012, Stephen Jay-Taylor
The most affecting moment in this, the 24th revival of John Copley’s 1974 staging, occurred after the performance had finished, during the curtain-calls, at the end of which Copley himself was ushered onto the stage, first for a solo bow, and then – with the curtains raised again – presented with an enormous decorated cake in celebration of his fifty years’ activity as a producer at Covent Garden. Tony Hall made an enthusiastic speech in appreciation of Copley’s achievements in the House, closely observed by a silent-but-present Antonio Pappano; and then the director himself rather reluctantly took the microphone to express both his gratitude and astonishment at this unexpected homage
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Wagner: The Flying Dutchman
English National Opera, 28th April 2012, Faye Courtney
I have a great deal of empathy with the poor cursed Flying Dutchman. As I traipse around various British and European opera houses I feel doomed to never find a production of Wagner’s early masterpiece that remains truly faithful to the composer’s intentions. I’ve encountered sewing machines in the Covent Garden version, exercise bikes in Munich, a space station in Cardiff and twenty-four refrigerators in Stuttgart but never anything that truly gets to the essential heart of the piece. English National Opera’s interesting new modern dress production by Jonathan Kent is promising but flawed, although the show is redeemed by some magnificent singing and thrilling orchestral playing which ranks among the finest I’ve heard at the Coliseum.
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Mariusz Kwiecien: Slavic Heroes
Mark Pullinger
When the Bolshoi brought its controversial production of Yevgeny Onegin to London in 2010 with a Polish baritone in the title role, it seemed rather perverse, a bit like The Royal Opera touring Peter Grimes starring a French tenor. However, the Polish baritone in question was Mariusz Kwiecien, who has the requisite looks and vocal characteristics for the role and seems ready to claim the mantle of ideal interpreter from the shoulders of Dmitri Hvorostovsky. The smouldering Siberian included arias from Onegin on his debut disc, as does Kwiecien, but where Hvorostovsky paired Tchaikovsky with his trademark Verdi, Kwiecien has stayed closer to home with an inventive programme entitled Slavic Heroes.
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Puccini: Turandot
Teatro Carlo Felice di Genova, 22nd April 2012, Nicola Lischi
When this revival of Turandot was announced, there was considerable buzz generated by the debuts of two extremely popular (at least in Italy) sopranos, Daniela Dessì in the title role and Mariella Devia as Liù. The excitement was even greater considering that both are “local” glories, hailing from Liguria, the region of Genoa. While Mariella Devia dutifully reported and sang the part of the slave girl, Daniela Dessì communicated to the management of the Teatro Carlo Felice that she was not going to show up only days before the beginning of rehearsals. This time no indisposition was claimed. Simply, the soprano – as she herself said in an interview with the local paper – wished to follow her husband, tenor Fabio Armiliato, on a tour for the presentation of Woody Allen’s latest film, where Armiliato plays a starring role.
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ENO unveils 2012-13 season
ENO recently scooped two Olivier Awards (which doubtless tasted even sweeter for being held at the Royal Opera House): the Best New Opera Production for Rameau’s Castor and Pollux and the Outstanding Achievement in Opera award for ‘The Breadth and Diversity of the Artistic Programme’. That breadth and diversity is there in spades for the 2012-13 season, unveiled this morning at the Coliseum. Another bold, risk-taking season lies ahead, headed by two new works, ensuring this is no Mickey Mouse season!
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Handel: Cajo Fabricio
London Handel Festival, 20th April 2012, Miranda Jackson
Battling your way through torrential rain on a Friday night to endure no less than five hours on one of the most uncomfortable church pews in London with no refreshments provided and inadequate provision of lavatories may not sound like your idea of fun, but Ensemble Serse’s first performance of Hasse’s Cajo Fabricio since 1733 was one of the best events in this year’s London Handel Festival.
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Opera at the BBC Proms
The unveiling of the annual BBC Proms prospectus is always a cause for anticipation, even if, operatically, some of the key events have been open secrets for some time. Among the ‘known unknowns’ is Glyndebourne’s Le nozze di Figaro on 28th August. Conducted by Robin Ticciati, there’s a strong cast led by Vito Priante(Figaro), Lydia Teuscher (Susanna), Sally Matthews soprano (Countess Almaviva) and Audun Iversen (Almaviva). Dinner jackets and tiaras at the ready!
Read more>>
Weber: Der Freischütz
Barbican, 19th April 2012, Stephen Jay-Taylor
As regular readers all know, I spend any amount of my time taking trips down memory lane: now I’m going to pack you off on one instead, and refer you back to my review of Weber’s opera as performed at last year’s Proms. In it, having given an overview of the miserable provision of the greatest pre-Wagnerian German opera on London’s stages, I had this to say:
“Now, of course, after what feels like an eternity of waiting, two Der Freischützes – at least in concert – come along (almost) at once, evidently the operatic equivalent of London buses. Well, perhaps not quite. When Sir Colin Davis conducts the piece next April as part of the LSO’s 2011/12 season at the Barbican, it will be with a seriously heavyweight Wagnerian cast – including Christine Brewer and Simon O’Neill in the leads – and, as written, in German, with the original spoken dialogue (the latter I am assuming: if instead we get the services of some smart-arse narrator, in any language, I will personally commit murder).”
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Donizetti: La fille du régiment
The Royal Opera, 17th April 2012, John E de Wald
La fille du régiment premiered in Paris at the Opera-Comique on 11 February 1840. Donizetti had by this point attained preeminence in France, inaugurated largely by the hugely successful premiere of Lucia di Lammermoor in 1837. The popularity of the Italian composer was such that Berlioz, in his predominantly dismissive review of the latter work, wrote: ‘One can no longer speak of the opera houses of Paris, but only of the opera houses of M. Donizetti.’ There is perhaps an element of irony in the ubiquity of Donizetti’s operas in the musical scene of the French capital, yet it is not terribly surprising that his buoyant melodies and virtuosic vocal writing became popular favourites with the public.
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Rihm: Jakob Lenz
English National Opera, 16th April 2012, Miranda Jackson
This was a night of high drama. Not only did the redoubtable Andrew Shore make not one but two attempts to drown himself, one within the opening bars of Wolfgang Rihm’s 1979 opera, Jakob Lenz, but we also saw his fantasy of the drowning of a child – a little too realistic for me. When I saw the Flower Maidens in Calixto Bieito’s Parsifal dressed as post-apocolyptic victims of abuse, sporting their fur coats and drawing on their silk underwear, bound with clingfilm and parcel tape, in bright red lipstick, I thought I’d seen it all. But at the first night of Jakob Lenz we witnessed a number of near-death experiences, not just the drowning child and Lenz’s suicide attempts, but Mr Shore slipping on the mud of Annemarie Woods’ set in his frenzy, several old ladies in the front row coming close to being gassed by dry ice and Suzy Cooper, playing the haunting focus of Lenz’s fantasies dicing with death as the elevated platform on which she danced flexed ominously on its ropes.
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Verdi: La traviata
Metropolitan Opera, New York, 14th April 2012, Mark Pullinger
Willy Decker’s spare, modern staging of La traviata has graced the stages of Salzburg, Amsterdam and New York over the last eight years, with a number of leading sopranos assuming the role of Violetta. Last night, it was Natalie Dessay’s turn to don the iconic little red dress at the Met. It gives me no pleasure at all to report that it was extremely moving for all the wrong reasons.
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Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius
Barbican, 14th April 2012, John E de Wald
Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius is now firmly established in the English tradition of religious choral music. Yet Elgar was himself wary of labelling it an oratorio in the tradition of Handel or Mendelssohn; indeed, the work sits somewhat uncomfortably amidst such a backdrop. On the one hand, there is the unusual nature of its subject matter itself—though the spiritual undertones and poignant music are starkly dramatic, the narrative focus is interiorised and abstract rather than physical. All drama and beauty, all despair and fury, must correspond not with any physical altercation, but rather the passage of a man’s soul from life to death and his ultimate journey before God. To be sure, it is a theme rich with meaning and gravity; nevertheless, it is surely not a facile one to realise dramatically in music.
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Handel: Acis & Galatea/ Beck: Black Water
Co-Opera, Adelaide, 14th April 2012, Sandra Bowdler
Handel’s Acis and Galatea was first composed for and staged at Cannons, the stately home of the Duke of Chandos, a friend and patron of the composer, in 1718. Following pirate revivals in London in the 1830s, Handel himself presented a new extended version in 1732 in the King’s Theatre in London. This contained some new characters beyond the original five (Acis, Galatea, Polyphemus, Damon, Coridon), and new material, including Italian arias. Further revisions ensued, mostly in this bilingual form, but the 5th edition published in 1743 represents the work almost as we know it today.
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Massenet: Manon
Metropolitan Opera, New York, 7th April 2012, Dominic Wells
It is almost exactly five years that Anna Netrebko took on the role of Manon in Berlin (April 2007), where she was partnered by long-term collaborator, Rolando Villazón – an account immortalised on DVD, conducted by Daniel Barenboim (DG, 2008). Despite being directed by Vincent Paterson – better known for his work with Madonna and other pop stars, and also responsible for Netrebko’s cringe-worthy debut DVD,The Woman, the Voice – that Berlin Manon, set in 1950s Hollywood, works very well both visually and aurally. Many no doubt objected to Manon presented as a pole-dancing Marilyn Monroe in Act IV, but the whole production reflected the egocentric nature of her character, even if it did border on exaggeration at times.
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Verdi: Requiem
Mariinsky at the Barbican, 4th April 2012, Stephen Jay-Taylor
There’s an art, clearly much-perfected in St. Petersburg, of making a little go a long way. When Verdi’s grand commemorative musical machine is mounted in London– which it is, with great regularity – you’ll usually find an orchestra of around 90-odd, plus a chorus of anything ranging from 120 to 240. But Valery Gergiev runs a tight ship back home and even more necessarily on tour; and so, both tonight and even more strikingly in last night’s infrastructurally remarkable Parsifal, the Mariinsky’s orchestra numbered no more than 70-odd (with just 46, as opposed to the standard 60, strings) and a chorus of less than 60, tout court. Closely grouped together on the Barbican platform as if huddling together for warmth, you could be forgiven for anticipating that the thinly-assembled forces would produce only a certain amount of sound and no more, at best hopefully gaining in inner-part clarity what they would inevitably lose in volume.
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Wagner: Parsifal
Mariinsky at the Barbican, 3rd April 2012, Mark Pullinger
Shorn of any directorial ‘Konzept’, concert performances of Wagner’s music dramas can focus on the real drama in the music. The key work in the Mariinsky’s Holy Week UK tour is, appropriately enough, Parsifal, whose Act III ends on Good Friday. The company’s publicity machine made much of their SACD recording in their promotions leading up to this performance at the Barbican. That recording was very well received in most quarters, although cast with some key non-Russian soloists – most notably René Pape’s Gurnemanz – so how would a roster of singers drawn entirely from the Mariinsky’s ranks fare in Wagner ‘sacred stage festival play’?
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Joan Rodgers & Roderick Williams
Wigmore Hall, 2nd April, John E de Wald
The tradition of German Lieder offers one of the archetypal evocations of Romanticism, that past sensibility wistfully suffused with the iconography of Caspar David Friedrich’s solitary adventurer standing boldly before nature, the lone hero consumed by love and an often semi-solipsistic sense of heightened personal emotion. Typically in the hands of the great composers granted voice tonight—Schumann, Brahms, Mahler, Wolf—this lends itself all too readily to a sense of life drawn from anguish, unrequited love, broken hearts, and worldly transience. Though this evening’s recital at the Wigmore Hall spoke to these emotions as all recitals grounded in this tradition must, it was buoyed by a singular sense of gentle humour and vibrancy.
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Verdi: Rigoletto
The Royal Opera, 30th March 2012, Stephen Jay-Taylor
The more McVicar shows I see, the more it forcibly strikes me that they are highly regarded not so much for their theatrical conviction or detailed direction, but for the simple reason that they are, for the most part, left in period, for the which relief it’s not so much a case of “much thanks” but of fawningly (and unspokenly) uncritical approval. “Oh, look! Rosenkavalier left in the Rococo! Adriana with actual crinolines! Thank God! No RegieRubbish here!” And it’s a view I both understand and have sympathy with. But – and you knew that was coming – you still have to look closely at the finished result, and ask whether a largely hands-off approach to the all-important matter of setting is actually successful. And here, I think, the vast majority of his stagings fail, visually drab and undifferentiated as so many of them are, based on only patchily effective unit-set designs, and with an almost uncanny inability to realise Act IV of any opera that actually has one (that of his Figaro is a visually incoherent mess; Faust no less so; that of his Aida – admittedly rubbish throughout – spectacularly fails at even the most basic story-telling level at the end; and Adriana’s Act IV is a narrative nonsense, with the important-to-the-plot absent soprano instead apparently having taken up fully-furnished residence backstage at the Comédie Française for all apparently to ignore).
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Mozart: Die Zauberflöte
Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, 27th March 2012, Mark Pullinger
Here was Rome at its gladiatorial worst. In Britain – or should that be just London – the only booing you’re likely to hear will be aimed at a director taking his/ her first night curtain call; the most recent – and controversial – being voiced at the new (to the Royal Opera) Rusalka. Similarly, Christof Loy’s production of Tristan und Isolde back in 2009 received vociferous boos from the expensive seats. Never before had I encountered it hurled towards a singer, until last night when Hulkar Sabirova’s ‘Der Hölle Rache’ was greeted with a barrage of booing, not from the ‘posh seats’ but from the Galleria and at decibels which made the recent Covent Garden dissenters appear tame by comparison.
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Handel: Riccardo Primo
London Handel Festival, 27th March 2012, Miranda Jackson
As a critic invited to the featured opera in the annual London Handel Festival hot from two excellent productions at the Wigmore Hall and Netherlands Opera I would expect to have to make allowances for young, inexperienced singers. At the Britten Theatre the LHF, in conjunction with the Royal College of Music, provide a showcase for the best of the young talent currently studying at the International Opera School. No less than eleven music coaches are credited in the programme for training these young singers in the refined art of singing opera seria. All those involved in coaching have every right to be proud: all the members of this young cast acquitted themselves admirably.
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Verdi: Falstaff
The Royal Opera, 15th May 2012, Mark Pullinger
‘All the world’s a jest’ quips Falstaff, kicking off the ‘devil of a fugue’ (to steal from Elgar) which concludes Verdi’s final opera as his characters are packed off to supper. They are no longer in conflict and class distinctions are (briefly?) forgotten in Robert Carsen’s outstanding new Royal Opera production as impoverished aristocracy and the ‘nouveau riche’ are united around the banqueting table. A fugue can be regarded as somewhat old-fashioned, like Falstaff’s concept of ‘honour’ expounded in Act I, but it provides a unifying resolution to the comic twists and turns in the Merry Wives’ bid to serve Sir John with his comeuppance. In this Golden Jubilee year, Carsen shunts the opera to the new Elizabethan age of the 1950s, an updating which works brilliantly, Brigitte Reiffenstuel’s tweeds and scarlet foxhunting jackets replacing traditional doublet and hose. I cannot remember the last time I enjoyed a new Royal Opera production quite so much.
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Juan Diego Flórez
Royal Albert Hall, 8th May 2012, Sebastian Petit
When it was announced that Juan Diego Flórez would give his next Rosenblatt recital at the Royal Albert Hall there were many who were quick to doubt his ability to fill the venue in either sense of the word. There are not many opera stars, even at Flórez’s level, who can fill the inhospitable cavern of the “Nation’s Village Hall”. Truth be told there were some empty seats but the house must have been well over three quarters full. One hopes that not too many of them were on a corporate junket and that Rosenblatt’s courage was rewarded.
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Puccini: Madam Butterfly
English National Opera, 8th May 2012, Mark Pullinger
Madam Butterfly is one of two operas virtually guaranteed to bring tears to the eyes of this traditionally stony-hearted critic (The Cunning Little Vixen is the other, should you be interested, so Glyndebourne should be on flood alert!). However, throughout this second ENO revival of Anthony Minghella’s classy staging, my tear ducts remained in a state of drought. Why? This is an incredibly stylish, glossy Butterfly, opulently costumed (Han Feng) against a largely bare stage, albeit sleek and lacquered. Michael Levine’s set has a steep rake creating a hill towards the rear over which most of the characters make their entrances and exits, often to spectacular visual effect. Acting is well directed (Sarah Tipple) and truthful; the singing, for the most part, excellent. This is, in short, a highly polished production, so why did it so utterly fail to move me?
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Rodgers: Carousel
Opera North, Leeds, 5th May 2012, Geoffrey Mogridge
The musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein may be too schmaltzy for some tastes but there's no denying their enduring appeal. Director Jo Davies whose production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore for Opera North did much to rehabilitate the piece has now taken on the famously weepy musical Carousel, arguably the schmaltziest of schmaltz - although in my book The Sound of Music would earn the palm by a whisker. And then there's the problem of THAT song - "You'll Never Walk Alone" - hijacked by Gerry and the Pacemakers back in 1963, adopted by Liverpool F.C soon afterwards and ever since then, just about the world's best loved anthem. Stephen Sondheim once said that Oklahoma (the partnership's first great success) is about a picnic whilst Carousel is about life and death - and one might add - a love that is lost.
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Glass: Einstein on the Beach
Barbican Theatre, 4th May 2012, Carla Finesilver
Two women sit at a desk, staring at us, motionless apart from their hands tracing quick rhythmic movements in the air. One is reciting poetry, the other interjecting a string of numbers, above a low-pitched organ hum. The woman reciting poetry is doing so in the pleasant but emotionally neutral tone of modern speech-synthesising software; the woman reciting numbers does so with humanity and expression in every one. Something is wrong: poetry woman starts to stutter – not a human stutter, but an android showing the first signs of malfunction. I don’t know what it means, but I’m gripped. And the performance proper hasn’t even begun yet.
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Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier
Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, 4th May 2012, Nicola Lischi
Incredibile dictu, Zubin Mehta had never conducted Der Rosenkavalier before this production that marked the inauguration of the 75th edition of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Truth be told, he was scheduled to open the 1989 Maggio with this opera, but became ill and was replaced by Jiri Kout. In any event, it is surprising – to say the least – that the 76 year old maestro, a pupil of Hans Swarowsky in Vienna, and who began his continued professional relationship with the Wiener Philharmoniker in the 1950s, had not tackled this seminal, extremely popular and quintessential Viennese opera. It was worth the long wait.
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Puccini: Tosca
Scottish Opera, Glasgow, 4th May 2012, Kelvin Holdsworth
Scottish Opera’s revival of Anthony Besch’s Tosca offers a rewarding evening, though not one without its problems. Vocally, this is a Tosca not to be missed. Unfortunately, most of the evening is marred by insensitive conducting and far too much noise from the pit.
The production itself has been a very successful one and surely owes the company no debts now. This is, believe it or not, the eighth time it has been revived and it has done more globetrotting than Scottish Opera productions usual manage, being seen as far afield as New Zealand and the USA. Such success is based on a solid, confident director who clearly knew what he was doing by updating the action to 1940s fascist Italy. It is immensely pleasing to look at and fits its shiny jackboots perfectly.
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Puccini: La bohème
The Royal Opera, 30th April 2012, Stephen Jay-Taylor
The most affecting moment in this, the 24th revival of John Copley’s 1974 staging, occurred after the performance had finished, during the curtain-calls, at the end of which Copley himself was ushered onto the stage, first for a solo bow, and then – with the curtains raised again – presented with an enormous decorated cake in celebration of his fifty years’ activity as a producer at Covent Garden. Tony Hall made an enthusiastic speech in appreciation of Copley’s achievements in the House, closely observed by a silent-but-present Antonio Pappano; and then the director himself rather reluctantly took the microphone to express both his gratitude and astonishment at this unexpected homage
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Wagner: The Flying Dutchman
English National Opera, 28th April 2012, Faye Courtney
I have a great deal of empathy with the poor cursed Flying Dutchman. As I traipse around various British and European opera houses I feel doomed to never find a production of Wagner’s early masterpiece that remains truly faithful to the composer’s intentions. I’ve encountered sewing machines in the Covent Garden version, exercise bikes in Munich, a space station in Cardiff and twenty-four refrigerators in Stuttgart but never anything that truly gets to the essential heart of the piece. English National Opera’s interesting new modern dress production by Jonathan Kent is promising but flawed, although the show is redeemed by some magnificent singing and thrilling orchestral playing which ranks among the finest I’ve heard at the Coliseum.
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Mariusz Kwiecien: Slavic Heroes
Mark Pullinger
When the Bolshoi brought its controversial production of Yevgeny Onegin to London in 2010 with a Polish baritone in the title role, it seemed rather perverse, a bit like The Royal Opera touring Peter Grimes starring a French tenor. However, the Polish baritone in question was Mariusz Kwiecien, who has the requisite looks and vocal characteristics for the role and seems ready to claim the mantle of ideal interpreter from the shoulders of Dmitri Hvorostovsky. The smouldering Siberian included arias from Onegin on his debut disc, as does Kwiecien, but where Hvorostovsky paired Tchaikovsky with his trademark Verdi, Kwiecien has stayed closer to home with an inventive programme entitled Slavic Heroes.
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Puccini: Turandot
Teatro Carlo Felice di Genova, 22nd April 2012, Nicola Lischi
When this revival of Turandot was announced, there was considerable buzz generated by the debuts of two extremely popular (at least in Italy) sopranos, Daniela Dessì in the title role and Mariella Devia as Liù. The excitement was even greater considering that both are “local” glories, hailing from Liguria, the region of Genoa. While Mariella Devia dutifully reported and sang the part of the slave girl, Daniela Dessì communicated to the management of the Teatro Carlo Felice that she was not going to show up only days before the beginning of rehearsals. This time no indisposition was claimed. Simply, the soprano – as she herself said in an interview with the local paper – wished to follow her husband, tenor Fabio Armiliato, on a tour for the presentation of Woody Allen’s latest film, where Armiliato plays a starring role.
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ENO unveils 2012-13 season
ENO recently scooped two Olivier Awards (which doubtless tasted even sweeter for being held at the Royal Opera House): the Best New Opera Production for Rameau’s Castor and Pollux and the Outstanding Achievement in Opera award for ‘The Breadth and Diversity of the Artistic Programme’. That breadth and diversity is there in spades for the 2012-13 season, unveiled this morning at the Coliseum. Another bold, risk-taking season lies ahead, headed by two new works, ensuring this is no Mickey Mouse season!
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Handel: Cajo Fabricio
London Handel Festival, 20th April 2012, Miranda Jackson
Battling your way through torrential rain on a Friday night to endure no less than five hours on one of the most uncomfortable church pews in London with no refreshments provided and inadequate provision of lavatories may not sound like your idea of fun, but Ensemble Serse’s first performance of Hasse’s Cajo Fabricio since 1733 was one of the best events in this year’s London Handel Festival.
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Opera at the BBC Proms
The unveiling of the annual BBC Proms prospectus is always a cause for anticipation, even if, operatically, some of the key events have been open secrets for some time. Among the ‘known unknowns’ is Glyndebourne’s Le nozze di Figaro on 28th August. Conducted by Robin Ticciati, there’s a strong cast led by Vito Priante(Figaro), Lydia Teuscher (Susanna), Sally Matthews soprano (Countess Almaviva) and Audun Iversen (Almaviva). Dinner jackets and tiaras at the ready!
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Weber: Der Freischütz
Barbican, 19th April 2012, Stephen Jay-Taylor
As regular readers all know, I spend any amount of my time taking trips down memory lane: now I’m going to pack you off on one instead, and refer you back to my review of Weber’s opera as performed at last year’s Proms. In it, having given an overview of the miserable provision of the greatest pre-Wagnerian German opera on London’s stages, I had this to say:
“Now, of course, after what feels like an eternity of waiting, two Der Freischützes – at least in concert – come along (almost) at once, evidently the operatic equivalent of London buses. Well, perhaps not quite. When Sir Colin Davis conducts the piece next April as part of the LSO’s 2011/12 season at the Barbican, it will be with a seriously heavyweight Wagnerian cast – including Christine Brewer and Simon O’Neill in the leads – and, as written, in German, with the original spoken dialogue (the latter I am assuming: if instead we get the services of some smart-arse narrator, in any language, I will personally commit murder).”
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Donizetti: La fille du régiment
The Royal Opera, 17th April 2012, John E de Wald
La fille du régiment premiered in Paris at the Opera-Comique on 11 February 1840. Donizetti had by this point attained preeminence in France, inaugurated largely by the hugely successful premiere of Lucia di Lammermoor in 1837. The popularity of the Italian composer was such that Berlioz, in his predominantly dismissive review of the latter work, wrote: ‘One can no longer speak of the opera houses of Paris, but only of the opera houses of M. Donizetti.’ There is perhaps an element of irony in the ubiquity of Donizetti’s operas in the musical scene of the French capital, yet it is not terribly surprising that his buoyant melodies and virtuosic vocal writing became popular favourites with the public.
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Rihm: Jakob Lenz
English National Opera, 16th April 2012, Miranda Jackson
This was a night of high drama. Not only did the redoubtable Andrew Shore make not one but two attempts to drown himself, one within the opening bars of Wolfgang Rihm’s 1979 opera, Jakob Lenz, but we also saw his fantasy of the drowning of a child – a little too realistic for me. When I saw the Flower Maidens in Calixto Bieito’s Parsifal dressed as post-apocolyptic victims of abuse, sporting their fur coats and drawing on their silk underwear, bound with clingfilm and parcel tape, in bright red lipstick, I thought I’d seen it all. But at the first night of Jakob Lenz we witnessed a number of near-death experiences, not just the drowning child and Lenz’s suicide attempts, but Mr Shore slipping on the mud of Annemarie Woods’ set in his frenzy, several old ladies in the front row coming close to being gassed by dry ice and Suzy Cooper, playing the haunting focus of Lenz’s fantasies dicing with death as the elevated platform on which she danced flexed ominously on its ropes.
Read more>>
Verdi: La traviata
Metropolitan Opera, New York, 14th April 2012, Mark Pullinger
Willy Decker’s spare, modern staging of La traviata has graced the stages of Salzburg, Amsterdam and New York over the last eight years, with a number of leading sopranos assuming the role of Violetta. Last night, it was Natalie Dessay’s turn to don the iconic little red dress at the Met. It gives me no pleasure at all to report that it was extremely moving for all the wrong reasons.
Read more>>
Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius
Barbican, 14th April 2012, John E de Wald
Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius is now firmly established in the English tradition of religious choral music. Yet Elgar was himself wary of labelling it an oratorio in the tradition of Handel or Mendelssohn; indeed, the work sits somewhat uncomfortably amidst such a backdrop. On the one hand, there is the unusual nature of its subject matter itself—though the spiritual undertones and poignant music are starkly dramatic, the narrative focus is interiorised and abstract rather than physical. All drama and beauty, all despair and fury, must correspond not with any physical altercation, but rather the passage of a man’s soul from life to death and his ultimate journey before God. To be sure, it is a theme rich with meaning and gravity; nevertheless, it is surely not a facile one to realise dramatically in music.
Read more>>
Handel: Acis & Galatea/ Beck: Black Water
Co-Opera, Adelaide, 14th April 2012, Sandra Bowdler
Handel’s Acis and Galatea was first composed for and staged at Cannons, the stately home of the Duke of Chandos, a friend and patron of the composer, in 1718. Following pirate revivals in London in the 1830s, Handel himself presented a new extended version in 1732 in the King’s Theatre in London. This contained some new characters beyond the original five (Acis, Galatea, Polyphemus, Damon, Coridon), and new material, including Italian arias. Further revisions ensued, mostly in this bilingual form, but the 5th edition published in 1743 represents the work almost as we know it today.
Read more>>
Massenet: Manon
Metropolitan Opera, New York, 7th April 2012, Dominic Wells
It is almost exactly five years that Anna Netrebko took on the role of Manon in Berlin (April 2007), where she was partnered by long-term collaborator, Rolando Villazón – an account immortalised on DVD, conducted by Daniel Barenboim (DG, 2008). Despite being directed by Vincent Paterson – better known for his work with Madonna and other pop stars, and also responsible for Netrebko’s cringe-worthy debut DVD,The Woman, the Voice – that Berlin Manon, set in 1950s Hollywood, works very well both visually and aurally. Many no doubt objected to Manon presented as a pole-dancing Marilyn Monroe in Act IV, but the whole production reflected the egocentric nature of her character, even if it did border on exaggeration at times.
Read more>>
Verdi: Requiem
Mariinsky at the Barbican, 4th April 2012, Stephen Jay-Taylor
There’s an art, clearly much-perfected in St. Petersburg, of making a little go a long way. When Verdi’s grand commemorative musical machine is mounted in London– which it is, with great regularity – you’ll usually find an orchestra of around 90-odd, plus a chorus of anything ranging from 120 to 240. But Valery Gergiev runs a tight ship back home and even more necessarily on tour; and so, both tonight and even more strikingly in last night’s infrastructurally remarkable Parsifal, the Mariinsky’s orchestra numbered no more than 70-odd (with just 46, as opposed to the standard 60, strings) and a chorus of less than 60, tout court. Closely grouped together on the Barbican platform as if huddling together for warmth, you could be forgiven for anticipating that the thinly-assembled forces would produce only a certain amount of sound and no more, at best hopefully gaining in inner-part clarity what they would inevitably lose in volume.
Read more>>
Wagner: Parsifal
Mariinsky at the Barbican, 3rd April 2012, Mark Pullinger
Shorn of any directorial ‘Konzept’, concert performances of Wagner’s music dramas can focus on the real drama in the music. The key work in the Mariinsky’s Holy Week UK tour is, appropriately enough, Parsifal, whose Act III ends on Good Friday. The company’s publicity machine made much of their SACD recording in their promotions leading up to this performance at the Barbican. That recording was very well received in most quarters, although cast with some key non-Russian soloists – most notably René Pape’s Gurnemanz – so how would a roster of singers drawn entirely from the Mariinsky’s ranks fare in Wagner ‘sacred stage festival play’?
Read more>>
Joan Rodgers & Roderick Williams
Wigmore Hall, 2nd April, John E de Wald
The tradition of German Lieder offers one of the archetypal evocations of Romanticism, that past sensibility wistfully suffused with the iconography of Caspar David Friedrich’s solitary adventurer standing boldly before nature, the lone hero consumed by love and an often semi-solipsistic sense of heightened personal emotion. Typically in the hands of the great composers granted voice tonight—Schumann, Brahms, Mahler, Wolf—this lends itself all too readily to a sense of life drawn from anguish, unrequited love, broken hearts, and worldly transience. Though this evening’s recital at the Wigmore Hall spoke to these emotions as all recitals grounded in this tradition must, it was buoyed by a singular sense of gentle humour and vibrancy.
Read more>>
Verdi: Rigoletto
The Royal Opera, 30th March 2012, Stephen Jay-Taylor
The more McVicar shows I see, the more it forcibly strikes me that they are highly regarded not so much for their theatrical conviction or detailed direction, but for the simple reason that they are, for the most part, left in period, for the which relief it’s not so much a case of “much thanks” but of fawningly (and unspokenly) uncritical approval. “Oh, look! Rosenkavalier left in the Rococo! Adriana with actual crinolines! Thank God! No RegieRubbish here!” And it’s a view I both understand and have sympathy with. But – and you knew that was coming – you still have to look closely at the finished result, and ask whether a largely hands-off approach to the all-important matter of setting is actually successful. And here, I think, the vast majority of his stagings fail, visually drab and undifferentiated as so many of them are, based on only patchily effective unit-set designs, and with an almost uncanny inability to realise Act IV of any opera that actually has one (that of his Figaro is a visually incoherent mess; Faust no less so; that of his Aida – admittedly rubbish throughout – spectacularly fails at even the most basic story-telling level at the end; and Adriana’s Act IV is a narrative nonsense, with the important-to-the-plot absent soprano instead apparently having taken up fully-furnished residence backstage at the Comédie Française for all apparently to ignore).
Read more>>
Mozart: Die Zauberflöte
Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, 27th March 2012, Mark Pullinger
Here was Rome at its gladiatorial worst. In Britain – or should that be just London – the only booing you’re likely to hear will be aimed at a director taking his/ her first night curtain call; the most recent – and controversial – being voiced at the new (to the Royal Opera) Rusalka. Similarly, Christof Loy’s production of Tristan und Isolde back in 2009 received vociferous boos from the expensive seats. Never before had I encountered it hurled towards a singer, until last night when Hulkar Sabirova’s ‘Der Hölle Rache’ was greeted with a barrage of booing, not from the ‘posh seats’ but from the Galleria and at decibels which made the recent Covent Garden dissenters appear tame by comparison.
Read more>>
Handel: Riccardo Primo
London Handel Festival, 27th March 2012, Miranda Jackson
As a critic invited to the featured opera in the annual London Handel Festival hot from two excellent productions at the Wigmore Hall and Netherlands Opera I would expect to have to make allowances for young, inexperienced singers. At the Britten Theatre the LHF, in conjunction with the Royal College of Music, provide a showcase for the best of the young talent currently studying at the International Opera School. No less than eleven music coaches are credited in the programme for training these young singers in the refined art of singing opera seria. All those involved in coaching have every right to be proud: all the members of this young cast acquitted themselves admirably.
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Verdi: Falstaff
The Royal Opera, 15th May 2012, Mark Pullinger
‘All the world’s a jest’ quips Falstaff, kicking off the ‘devil of a fugue’ (to steal from Elgar) which concludes Verdi’s final opera as his characters are packed off to supper. They are no longer in conflict and class distinctions are (briefly?) forgotten in Robert Carsen’s outstanding new Royal Opera production as impoverished aristocracy and the ‘nouveau riche’ are united around the banqueting table. A fugue can be regarded as somewhat old-fashioned, like Falstaff’s concept of ‘honour’ expounded in Act I, but it provides a unifying resolution to the comic twists and turns in the Merry Wives’ bid to serve Sir John with his comeuppance. In this Golden Jubilee year, Carsen shunts the opera to the new Elizabethan age of the 1950s, an updating which works brilliantly, Brigitte Reiffenstuel’s tweeds and scarlet foxhunting jackets replacing traditional doublet and hose. I cannot remember the last time I enjoyed a new Royal Opera production quite so much.
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Juan Diego Flórez
Royal Albert Hall, 8th May 2012, Sebastian Petit
When it was announced that Juan Diego Flórez would give his next Rosenblatt recital at the Royal Albert Hall there were many who were quick to doubt his ability to fill the venue in either sense of the word. There are not many opera stars, even at Flórez’s level, who can fill the inhospitable cavern of the “Nation’s Village Hall”. Truth be told there were some empty seats but the house must have been well over three quarters full. One hopes that not too many of them were on a corporate junket and that Rosenblatt’s courage was rewarded.
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Puccini: Madam Butterfly
English National Opera, 8th May 2012, Mark Pullinger
Madam Butterfly is one of two operas virtually guaranteed to bring tears to the eyes of this traditionally stony-hearted critic (The Cunning Little Vixen is the other, should you be interested, so Glyndebourne should be on flood alert!). However, throughout this second ENO revival of Anthony Minghella’s classy staging, my tear ducts remained in a state of drought. Why? This is an incredibly stylish, glossy Butterfly, opulently costumed (Han Feng) against a largely bare stage, albeit sleek and lacquered. Michael Levine’s set has a steep rake creating a hill towards the rear over which most of the characters make their entrances and exits, often to spectacular visual effect. Acting is well directed (Sarah Tipple) and truthful; the singing, for the most part, excellent. This is, in short, a highly polished production, so why did it so utterly fail to move me?
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Rodgers: Carousel
Opera North, Leeds, 5th May 2012, Geoffrey Mogridge
The musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein may be too schmaltzy for some tastes but there's no denying their enduring appeal. Director Jo Davies whose production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore for Opera North did much to rehabilitate the piece has now taken on the famously weepy musical Carousel, arguably the schmaltziest of schmaltz - although in my book The Sound of Music would earn the palm by a whisker. And then there's the problem of THAT song - "You'll Never Walk Alone" - hijacked by Gerry and the Pacemakers back in 1963, adopted by Liverpool F.C soon afterwards and ever since then, just about the world's best loved anthem. Stephen Sondheim once said that Oklahoma (the partnership's first great success) is about a picnic whilst Carousel is about life and death - and one might add - a love that is lost.
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Glass: Einstein on the Beach
Barbican Theatre, 4th May 2012, Carla Finesilver
Two women sit at a desk, staring at us, motionless apart from their hands tracing quick rhythmic movements in the air. One is reciting poetry, the other interjecting a string of numbers, above a low-pitched organ hum. The woman reciting poetry is doing so in the pleasant but emotionally neutral tone of modern speech-synthesising software; the woman reciting numbers does so with humanity and expression in every one. Something is wrong: poetry woman starts to stutter – not a human stutter, but an android showing the first signs of malfunction. I don’t know what it means, but I’m gripped. And the performance proper hasn’t even begun yet.
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Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier
Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, 4th May 2012, Nicola Lischi
Incredibile dictu, Zubin Mehta had never conducted Der Rosenkavalier before this production that marked the inauguration of the 75th edition of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Truth be told, he was scheduled to open the 1989 Maggio with this opera, but became ill and was replaced by Jiri Kout. In any event, it is surprising – to say the least – that the 76 year old maestro, a pupil of Hans Swarowsky in Vienna, and who began his continued professional relationship with the Wiener Philharmoniker in the 1950s, had not tackled this seminal, extremely popular and quintessential Viennese opera. It was worth the long wait.
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Puccini: Tosca
Scottish Opera, Glasgow, 4th May 2012, Kelvin Holdsworth
Scottish Opera’s revival of Anthony Besch’s Tosca offers a rewarding evening, though not one without its problems. Vocally, this is a Tosca not to be missed. Unfortunately, most of the evening is marred by insensitive conducting and far too much noise from the pit.
The production itself has been a very successful one and surely owes the company no debts now. This is, believe it or not, the eighth time it has been revived and it has done more globetrotting than Scottish Opera productions usual manage, being seen as far afield as New Zealand and the USA. Such success is based on a solid, confident director who clearly knew what he was doing by updating the action to 1940s fascist Italy. It is immensely pleasing to look at and fits its shiny jackboots perfectly.
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Puccini: La bohème
The Royal Opera, 30th April 2012, Stephen Jay-Taylor
The most affecting moment in this, the 24th revival of John Copley’s 1974 staging, occurred after the performance had finished, during the curtain-calls, at the end of which Copley himself was ushered onto the stage, first for a solo bow, and then – with the curtains raised again – presented with an enormous decorated cake in celebration of his fifty years’ activity as a producer at Covent Garden. Tony Hall made an enthusiastic speech in appreciation of Copley’s achievements in the House, closely observed by a silent-but-present Antonio Pappano; and then the director himself rather reluctantly took the microphone to express both his gratitude and astonishment at this unexpected homage
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Wagner: The Flying Dutchman
English National Opera, 28th April 2012, Faye Courtney
I have a great deal of empathy with the poor cursed Flying Dutchman. As I traipse around various British and European opera houses I feel doomed to never find a production of Wagner’s early masterpiece that remains truly faithful to the composer’s intentions. I’ve encountered sewing machines in the Covent Garden version, exercise bikes in Munich, a space station in Cardiff and twenty-four refrigerators in Stuttgart but never anything that truly gets to the essential heart of the piece. English National Opera’s interesting new modern dress production by Jonathan Kent is promising but flawed, although the show is redeemed by some magnificent singing and thrilling orchestral playing which ranks among the finest I’ve heard at the Coliseum.
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Mariusz Kwiecien: Slavic Heroes
Mark Pullinger
When the Bolshoi brought its controversial production of Yevgeny Onegin to London in 2010 with a Polish baritone in the title role, it seemed rather perverse, a bit like The Royal Opera touring Peter Grimes starring a French tenor. However, the Polish baritone in question was Mariusz Kwiecien, who has the requisite looks and vocal characteristics for the role and seems ready to claim the mantle of ideal interpreter from the shoulders of Dmitri Hvorostovsky. The smouldering Siberian included arias from Onegin on his debut disc, as does Kwiecien, but where Hvorostovsky paired Tchaikovsky with his trademark Verdi, Kwiecien has stayed closer to home with an inventive programme entitled Slavic Heroes.
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Puccini: Turandot
Teatro Carlo Felice di Genova, 22nd April 2012, Nicola Lischi
When this revival of Turandot was announced, there was considerable buzz generated by the debuts of two extremely popular (at least in Italy) sopranos, Daniela Dessì in the title role and Mariella Devia as Liù. The excitement was even greater considering that both are “local” glories, hailing from Liguria, the region of Genoa. While Mariella Devia dutifully reported and sang the part of the slave girl, Daniela Dessì communicated to the management of the Teatro Carlo Felice that she was not going to show up only days before the beginning of rehearsals. This time no indisposition was claimed. Simply, the soprano – as she herself said in an interview with the local paper – wished to follow her husband, tenor Fabio Armiliato, on a tour for the presentation of Woody Allen’s latest film, where Armiliato plays a starring role.
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ENO unveils 2012-13 season
ENO recently scooped two Olivier Awards (which doubtless tasted even sweeter for being held at the Royal Opera House): the Best New Opera Production for Rameau’s Castor and Pollux and the Outstanding Achievement in Opera award for ‘The Breadth and Diversity of the Artistic Programme’. That breadth and diversity is there in spades for the 2012-13 season, unveiled this morning at the Coliseum. Another bold, risk-taking season lies ahead, headed by two new works, ensuring this is no Mickey Mouse season!
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Handel: Cajo Fabricio
London Handel Festival, 20th April 2012, Miranda Jackson
Battling your way through torrential rain on a Friday night to endure no less than five hours on one of the most uncomfortable church pews in London with no refreshments provided and inadequate provision of lavatories may not sound like your idea of fun, but Ensemble Serse’s first performance of Hasse’s Cajo Fabricio since 1733 was one of the best events in this year’s London Handel Festival.
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Opera at the BBC Proms
The unveiling of the annual BBC Proms prospectus is always a cause for anticipation, even if, operatically, some of the key events have been open secrets for some time. Among the ‘known unknowns’ is Glyndebourne’s Le nozze di Figaro on 28th August. Conducted by Robin Ticciati, there’s a strong cast led by Vito Priante(Figaro), Lydia Teuscher (Susanna), Sally Matthews soprano (Countess Almaviva) and Audun Iversen (Almaviva). Dinner jackets and tiaras at the ready!
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Weber: Der Freischütz
Barbican, 19th April 2012, Stephen Jay-Taylor
As regular readers all know, I spend any amount of my time taking trips down memory lane: now I’m going to pack you off on one instead, and refer you back to my review of Weber’s opera as performed at last year’s Proms. In it, having given an overview of the miserable provision of the greatest pre-Wagnerian German opera on London’s stages, I had this to say:
“Now, of course, after what feels like an eternity of waiting, two Der Freischützes – at least in concert – come along (almost) at once, evidently the operatic equivalent of London buses. Well, perhaps not quite. When Sir Colin Davis conducts the piece next April as part of the LSO’s 2011/12 season at the Barbican, it will be with a seriously heavyweight Wagnerian cast – including Christine Brewer and Simon O’Neill in the leads – and, as written, in German, with the original spoken dialogue (the latter I am assuming: if instead we get the services of some smart-arse narrator, in any language, I will personally commit murder).”
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Donizetti: La fille du régiment
The Royal Opera, 17th April 2012, John E de Wald
La fille du régiment premiered in Paris at the Opera-Comique on 11 February 1840. Donizetti had by this point attained preeminence in France, inaugurated largely by the hugely successful premiere of Lucia di Lammermoor in 1837. The popularity of the Italian composer was such that Berlioz, in his predominantly dismissive review of the latter work, wrote: ‘One can no longer speak of the opera houses of Paris, but only of the opera houses of M. Donizetti.’ There is perhaps an element of irony in the ubiquity of Donizetti’s operas in the musical scene of the French capital, yet it is not terribly surprising that his buoyant melodies and virtuosic vocal writing became popular favourites with the public.
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Rihm: Jakob Lenz
English National Opera, 16th April 2012, Miranda Jackson
This was a night of high drama. Not only did the redoubtable Andrew Shore make not one but two attempts to drown himself, one within the opening bars of Wolfgang Rihm’s 1979 opera, Jakob Lenz, but we also saw his fantasy of the drowning of a child – a little too realistic for me. When I saw the Flower Maidens in Calixto Bieito’s Parsifal dressed as post-apocolyptic victims of abuse, sporting their fur coats and drawing on their silk underwear, bound with clingfilm and parcel tape, in bright red lipstick, I thought I’d seen it all. But at the first night of Jakob Lenz we witnessed a number of near-death experiences, not just the drowning child and Lenz’s suicide attempts, but Mr Shore slipping on the mud of Annemarie Woods’ set in his frenzy, several old ladies in the front row coming close to being gassed by dry ice and Suzy Cooper, playing the haunting focus of Lenz’s fantasies dicing with death as the elevated platform on which she danced flexed ominously on its ropes.
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Verdi: La traviata
Metropolitan Opera, New York, 14th April 2012, Mark Pullinger
Willy Decker’s spare, modern staging of La traviata has graced the stages of Salzburg, Amsterdam and New York over the last eight years, with a number of leading sopranos assuming the role of Violetta. Last night, it was Natalie Dessay’s turn to don the iconic little red dress at the Met. It gives me no pleasure at all to report that it was extremely moving for all the wrong reasons.
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Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius
Barbican, 14th April 2012, John E de Wald
Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius is now firmly established in the English tradition of religious choral music. Yet Elgar was himself wary of labelling it an oratorio in the tradition of Handel or Mendelssohn; indeed, the work sits somewhat uncomfortably amidst such a backdrop. On the one hand, there is the unusual nature of its subject matter itself—though the spiritual undertones and poignant music are starkly dramatic, the narrative focus is interiorised and abstract rather than physical. All drama and beauty, all despair and fury, must correspond not with any physical altercation, but rather the passage of a man’s soul from life to death and his ultimate journey before God. To be sure, it is a theme rich with meaning and gravity; nevertheless, it is surely not a facile one to realise dramatically in music.
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Handel: Acis & Galatea/ Beck: Black Water
Co-Opera, Adelaide, 14th April 2012, Sandra Bowdler
Handel’s Acis and Galatea was first composed for and staged at Cannons, the stately home of the Duke of Chandos, a friend and patron of the composer, in 1718. Following pirate revivals in London in the 1830s, Handel himself presented a new extended version in 1732 in the King’s Theatre in London. This contained some new characters beyond the original five (Acis, Galatea, Polyphemus, Damon, Coridon), and new material, including Italian arias. Further revisions ensued, mostly in this bilingual form, but the 5th edition published in 1743 represents the work almost as we know it today.
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Massenet: Manon
Metropolitan Opera, New York, 7th April 2012, Dominic Wells
It is almost exactly five years that Anna Netrebko took on the role of Manon in Berlin (April 2007), where she was partnered by long-term collaborator, Rolando Villazón – an account immortalised on DVD, conducted by Daniel Barenboim (DG, 2008). Despite being directed by Vincent Paterson – better known for his work with Madonna and other pop stars, and also responsible for Netrebko’s cringe-worthy debut DVD,The Woman, the Voice – that Berlin Manon, set in 1950s Hollywood, works very well both visually and aurally. Many no doubt objected to Manon presented as a pole-dancing Marilyn Monroe in Act IV, but the whole production reflected the egocentric nature of her character, even if it did border on exaggeration at times.
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Verdi: Requiem
Mariinsky at the Barbican, 4th April 2012, Stephen Jay-Taylor
There’s an art, clearly much-perfected in St. Petersburg, of making a little go a long way. When Verdi’s grand commemorative musical machine is mounted in London– which it is, with great regularity – you’ll usually find an orchestra of around 90-odd, plus a chorus of anything ranging from 120 to 240. But Valery Gergiev runs a tight ship back home and even more necessarily on tour; and so, both tonight and even more strikingly in last night’s infrastructurally remarkable Parsifal, the Mariinsky’s orchestra numbered no more than 70-odd (with just 46, as opposed to the standard 60, strings) and a chorus of less than 60, tout court. Closely grouped together on the Barbican platform as if huddling together for warmth, you could be forgiven for anticipating that the thinly-assembled forces would produce only a certain amount of sound and no more, at best hopefully gaining in inner-part clarity what they would inevitably lose in volume.
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Wagner: Parsifal
Mariinsky at the Barbican, 3rd April 2012, Mark Pullinger
Shorn of any directorial ‘Konzept’, concert performances of Wagner’s music dramas can focus on the real drama in the music. The key work in the Mariinsky’s Holy Week UK tour is, appropriately enough, Parsifal, whose Act III ends on Good Friday. The company’s publicity machine made much of their SACD recording in their promotions leading up to this performance at the Barbican. That recording was very well received in most quarters, although cast with some key non-Russian soloists – most notably René Pape’s Gurnemanz – so how would a roster of singers drawn entirely from the Mariinsky’s ranks fare in Wagner ‘sacred stage festival play’?
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Joan Rodgers & Roderick Williams
Wigmore Hall, 2nd April, John E de Wald
The tradition of German Lieder offers one of the archetypal evocations of Romanticism, that past sensibility wistfully suffused with the iconography of Caspar David Friedrich’s solitary adventurer standing boldly before nature, the lone hero consumed by love and an often semi-solipsistic sense of heightened personal emotion. Typically in the hands of the great composers granted voice tonight—Schumann, Brahms, Mahler, Wolf—this lends itself all too readily to a sense of life drawn from anguish, unrequited love, broken hearts, and worldly transience. Though this evening’s recital at the Wigmore Hall spoke to these emotions as all recitals grounded in this tradition must, it was buoyed by a singular sense of gentle humour and vibrancy.
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Verdi: Rigoletto
The Royal Opera, 30th March 2012, Stephen Jay-Taylor
The more McVicar shows I see, the more it forcibly strikes me that they are highly regarded not so much for their theatrical conviction or detailed direction, but for the simple reason that they are, for the most part, left in period, for the which relief it’s not so much a case of “much thanks” but of fawningly (and unspokenly) uncritical approval. “Oh, look! Rosenkavalier left in the Rococo! Adriana with actual crinolines! Thank God! No RegieRubbish here!” And it’s a view I both understand and have sympathy with. But – and you knew that was coming – you still have to look closely at the finished result, and ask whether a largely hands-off approach to the all-important matter of setting is actually successful. And here, I think, the vast majority of his stagings fail, visually drab and undifferentiated as so many of them are, based on only patchily effective unit-set designs, and with an almost uncanny inability to realise Act IV of any opera that actually has one (that of his Figaro is a visually incoherent mess; Faust no less so; that of his Aida – admittedly rubbish throughout – spectacularly fails at even the most basic story-telling level at the end; and Adriana’s Act IV is a narrative nonsense, with the important-to-the-plot absent soprano instead apparently having taken up fully-furnished residence backstage at the Comédie Française for all apparently to ignore).
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Mozart: Die Zauberflöte
Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, 27th March 2012, Mark Pullinger
Here was Rome at its gladiatorial worst. In Britain – or should that be just London – the only booing you’re likely to hear will be aimed at a director taking his/ her first night curtain call; the most recent – and controversial – being voiced at the new (to the Royal Opera) Rusalka. Similarly, Christof Loy’s production of Tristan und Isolde back in 2009 received vociferous boos from the expensive seats. Never before had I encountered it hurled towards a singer, until last night when Hulkar Sabirova’s ‘Der Hölle Rache’ was greeted with a barrage of booing, not from the ‘posh seats’ but from the Galleria and at decibels which made the recent Covent Garden dissenters appear tame by comparison.
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Handel: Riccardo Primo
London Handel Festival, 27th March 2012, Miranda Jackson
As a critic invited to the featured opera in the annual London Handel Festival hot from two excellent productions at the Wigmore Hall and Netherlands Opera I would expect to have to make allowances for young, inexperienced singers. At the Britten Theatre the LHF, in conjunction with the Royal College of Music, provide a showcase for the best of the young talent currently studying at the International Opera School. No less than eleven music coaches are credited in the programme for training these young singers in the refined art of singing opera seria. All those involved in coaching have every right to be proud: all the members of this young cast acquitted themselves admirably.
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Verdi: Falstaff
The Royal Opera, 15th May 2012, Mark Pullinger
‘All the world’s a jest’ quips Falstaff, kicking off the ‘devil of a fugue’ (to steal from Elgar) which concludes Verdi’s final opera as his characters are packed off to supper. They are no longer in conflict and class distinctions are (briefly?) forgotten in Robert Carsen’s outstanding new Royal Opera production as impoverished aristocracy and the ‘nouveau riche’ are united around the banqueting table. A fugue can be regarded as somewhat old-fashioned, like Falstaff’s concept of ‘honour’ expounded in Act I, but it provides a unifying resolution to the comic twists and turns in the Merry Wives’ bid to serve Sir John with his comeuppance. In this Golden Jubilee year, Carsen shunts the opera to the new Elizabethan age of the 1950s, an updating which works brilliantly, Brigitte Reiffenstuel’s tweeds and scarlet foxhunting jackets replacing traditional doublet and hose. I cannot remember the last time I enjoyed a new Royal Opera production quite so much.
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Juan Diego Flórez
Royal Albert Hall, 8th May 2012, Sebastian Petit
When it was announced that Juan Diego Flórez would give his next Rosenblatt recital at the Royal Albert Hall there were many who were quick to doubt his ability to fill the venue in either sense of the word. There are not many opera stars, even at Flórez’s level, who can fill the inhospitable cavern of the “Nation’s Village Hall”. Truth be told there were some empty seats but the house must have been well over three quarters full. One hopes that not too many of them were on a corporate junket and that Rosenblatt’s courage was rewarded.
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Puccini: Madam Butterfly
English National Opera, 8th May 2012, Mark Pullinger
Madam Butterfly is one of two operas virtually guaranteed to bring tears to the eyes of this traditionally stony-hearted critic (The Cunning Little Vixen is the other, should you be interested, so Glyndebourne should be on flood alert!). However, throughout this second ENO revival of Anthony Minghella’s classy staging, my tear ducts remained in a state of drought. Why? This is an incredibly stylish, glossy Butterfly, opulently costumed (Han Feng) against a largely bare stage, albeit sleek and lacquered. Michael Levine’s set has a steep rake creating a hill towards the rear over which most of the characters make their entrances and exits, often to spectacular visual effect. Acting is well directed (Sarah Tipple) and truthful; the singing, for the most part, excellent. This is, in short, a highly polished production, so why did it so utterly fail to move me?
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Rodgers: Carousel
Opera North, Leeds, 5th May 2012, Geoffrey Mogridge
The musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein may be too schmaltzy for some tastes but there's no denying their enduring appeal. Director Jo Davies whose production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore for Opera North did much to rehabilitate the piece has now taken on the famously weepy musical Carousel, arguably the schmaltziest of schmaltz - although in my book The Sound of Music would earn the palm by a whisker. And then there's the problem of THAT song - "You'll Never Walk Alone" - hijacked by Gerry and the Pacemakers back in 1963, adopted by Liverpool F.C soon afterwards and ever since then, just about the world's best loved anthem. Stephen Sondheim once said that Oklahoma (the partnership's first great success) is about a picnic whilst Carousel is about life and death - and one might add - a love that is lost.
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Glass: Einstein on the Beach
Barbican Theatre, 4th May 2012, Carla Finesilver
Two women sit at a desk, staring at us, motionless apart from their hands tracing quick rhythmic movements in the air. One is reciting poetry, the other interjecting a string of numbers, above a low-pitched organ hum. The woman reciting poetry is doing so in the pleasant but emotionally neutral tone of modern speech-synthesising software; the woman reciting numbers does so with humanity and expression in every one. Something is wrong: poetry woman starts to stutter – not a human stutter, but an android showing the first signs of malfunction. I don’t know what it means, but I’m gripped. And the performance proper hasn’t even begun yet.
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Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier
Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, 4th May 2012, Nicola Lischi
Incredibile dictu, Zubin Mehta had never conducted Der Rosenkavalier before this production that marked the inauguration of the 75th edition of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Truth be told, he was scheduled to open the 1989 Maggio with this opera, but became ill and was replaced by Jiri Kout. In any event, it is surprising – to say the least – that the 76 year old maestro, a pupil of Hans Swarowsky in Vienna, and who began his continued professional relationship with the Wiener Philharmoniker in the 1950s, had not tackled this seminal, extremely popular and quintessential Viennese opera. It was worth the long wait.
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Puccini: Tosca
Scottish Opera, Glasgow, 4th May 2012, Kelvin Holdsworth
Scottish Opera’s revival of Anthony Besch’s Tosca offers a rewarding evening, though not one without its problems. Vocally, this is a Tosca not to be missed. Unfortunately, most of the evening is marred by insensitive conducting and far too much noise from the pit.
The production itself has been a very successful one and surely owes the company no debts now. This is, believe it or not, the eighth time it has been revived and it has done more globetrotting than Scottish Opera productions usual manage, being seen as far afield as New Zealand and the USA. Such success is based on a solid, confident director who clearly knew what he was doing by updating the action to 1940s fascist Italy. It is immensely pleasing to look at and fits its shiny jackboots perfectly.
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Puccini: La bohème
The Royal Opera, 30th April 2012, Stephen Jay-Taylor
The most affecting moment in this, the 24th revival of John Copley’s 1974 staging, occurred after the performance had finished, during the curtain-calls, at the end of which Copley himself was ushered onto the stage, first for a solo bow, and then – with the curtains raised again – presented with an enormous decorated cake in celebration of his fifty years’ activity as a producer at Covent Garden. Tony Hall made an enthusiastic speech in appreciation of Copley’s achievements in the House, closely observed by a silent-but-present Antonio Pappano; and then the director himself rather reluctantly took the microphone to express both his gratitude and astonishment at this unexpected homage
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Wagner: The Flying Dutchman
English National Opera, 28th April 2012, Faye Courtney
I have a great deal of empathy with the poor cursed Flying Dutchman. As I traipse around various British and European opera houses I feel doomed to never find a production of Wagner’s early masterpiece that remains truly faithful to the composer’s intentions. I’ve encountered sewing machines in the Covent Garden version, exercise bikes in Munich, a space station in Cardiff and twenty-four refrigerators in Stuttgart but never anything that truly gets to the essential heart of the piece. English National Opera’s interesting new modern dress production by Jonathan Kent is promising but flawed, although the show is redeemed by some magnificent singing and thrilling orchestral playing which ranks among the finest I’ve heard at the Coliseum.
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Mariusz Kwiecien: Slavic Heroes
Mark Pullinger
When the Bolshoi brought its controversial production of Yevgeny Onegin to London in 2010 with a Polish baritone in the title role, it seemed rather perverse, a bit like The Royal Opera touring Peter Grimes starring a French tenor. However, the Polish baritone in question was Mariusz Kwiecien, who has the requisite looks and vocal characteristics for the role and seems ready to claim the mantle of ideal interpreter from the shoulders of Dmitri Hvorostovsky. The smouldering Siberian included arias from Onegin on his debut disc, as does Kwiecien, but where Hvorostovsky paired Tchaikovsky with his trademark Verdi, Kwiecien has stayed closer to home with an inventive programme entitled Slavic Heroes.
Read more>>
Puccini: Turandot
Teatro Carlo Felice di Genova, 22nd April 2012, Nicola Lischi
When this revival of Turandot was announced, there was considerable buzz generated by the debuts of two extremely popular (at least in Italy) sopranos, Daniela Dessì in the title role and Mariella Devia as Liù. The excitement was even greater considering that both are “local” glories, hailing from Liguria, the region of Genoa. While Mariella Devia dutifully reported and sang the part of the slave girl, Daniela Dessì communicated to the management of the Teatro Carlo Felice that she was not going to show up only days before the beginning of rehearsals. This time no indisposition was claimed. Simply, the soprano – as she herself said in an interview with the local paper – wished to follow her husband, tenor Fabio Armiliato, on a tour for the presentation of Woody Allen’s latest film, where Armiliato plays a starring role.
Read more>>
ENO unveils 2012-13 season
ENO recently scooped two Olivier Awards (which doubtless tasted even sweeter for being held at the Royal Opera House): the Best New Opera Production for Rameau’s Castor and Pollux and the Outstanding Achievement in Opera award for ‘The Breadth and Diversity of the Artistic Programme’. That breadth and diversity is there in spades for the 2012-13 season, unveiled this morning at the Coliseum. Another bold, risk-taking season lies ahead, headed by two new works, ensuring this is no Mickey Mouse season!
Read more>>
Handel: Cajo Fabricio
London Handel Festival, 20th April 2012, Miranda Jackson
Battling your way through torrential rain on a Friday night to endure no less than five hours on one of the most uncomfortable church pews in London with no refreshments provided and inadequate provision of lavatories may not sound like your idea of fun, but Ensemble Serse’s first performance of Hasse’s Cajo Fabricio since 1733 was one of the best events in this year’s London Handel Festival.
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Opera at the BBC Proms
The unveiling of the annual BBC Proms prospectus is always a cause for anticipation, even if, operatically, some of the key events have been open secrets for some time. Among the ‘known unknowns’ is Glyndebourne’s Le nozze di Figaro on 28th August. Conducted by Robin Ticciati, there’s a strong cast led by Vito Priante(Figaro), Lydia Teuscher (Susanna), Sally Matthews soprano (Countess Almaviva) and Audun Iversen (Almaviva). Dinner jackets and tiaras at the ready!
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Weber: Der Freischütz
Barbican, 19th April 2012, Stephen Jay-Taylor
As regular readers all know, I spend any amount of my time taking trips down memory lane: now I’m going to pack you off on one instead, and refer you back to my review of Weber’s opera as performed at last year’s Proms. In it, having given an overview of the miserable provision of the greatest pre-Wagnerian German opera on London’s stages, I had this to say:
“Now, of course, after what feels like an eternity of waiting, two Der Freischützes – at least in concert – come along (almost) at once, evidently the operatic equivalent of London buses. Well, perhaps not quite. When Sir Colin Davis conducts the piece next April as part of the LSO’s 2011/12 season at the Barbican, it will be with a seriously heavyweight Wagnerian cast – including Christine Brewer and Simon O’Neill in the leads – and, as written, in German, with the original spoken dialogue (the latter I am assuming: if instead we get the services of some smart-arse narrator, in any language, I will personally commit murder).”
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Donizetti: La fille du régiment
The Royal Opera, 17th April 2012, John E de Wald
La fille du régiment premiered in Paris at the Opera-Comique on 11 February 1840. Donizetti had by this point attained preeminence in France, inaugurated largely by the hugely successful premiere of Lucia di Lammermoor in 1837. The popularity of the Italian composer was such that Berlioz, in his predominantly dismissive review of the latter work, wrote: ‘One can no longer speak of the opera houses of Paris, but only of the opera houses of M. Donizetti.’ There is perhaps an element of irony in the ubiquity of Donizetti’s operas in the musical scene of the French capital, yet it is not terribly surprising that his buoyant melodies and virtuosic vocal writing became popular favourites with the public.
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Rihm: Jakob Lenz
English National Opera, 16th April 2012, Miranda Jackson
This was a night of high drama. Not only did the redoubtable Andrew Shore make not one but two attempts to drown himself, one within the opening bars of Wolfgang Rihm’s 1979 opera, Jakob Lenz, but we also saw his fantasy of the drowning of a child – a little too realistic for me. When I saw the Flower Maidens in Calixto Bieito’s Parsifal dressed as post-apocolyptic victims of abuse, sporting their fur coats and drawing on their silk underwear, bound with clingfilm and parcel tape, in bright red lipstick, I thought I’d seen it all. But at the first night of Jakob Lenz we witnessed a number of near-death experiences, not just the drowning child and Lenz’s suicide attempts, but Mr Shore slipping on the mud of Annemarie Woods’ set in his frenzy, several old ladies in the front row coming close to being gassed by dry ice and Suzy Cooper, playing the haunting focus of Lenz’s fantasies dicing with death as the elevated platform on which she danced flexed ominously on its ropes.
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Verdi: La traviata
Metropolitan Opera, New York, 14th April 2012, Mark Pullinger
Willy Decker’s spare, modern staging of La traviata has graced the stages of Salzburg, Amsterdam and New York over the last eight years, with a number of leading sopranos assuming the role of Violetta. Last night, it was Natalie Dessay’s turn to don the iconic little red dress at the Met. It gives me no pleasure at all to report that it was extremely moving for all the wrong reasons.
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Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius
Barbican, 14th April 2012, John E de Wald
Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius is now firmly established in the English tradition of religious choral music. Yet Elgar was himself wary of labelling it an oratorio in the tradition of Handel or Mendelssohn; indeed, the work sits somewhat uncomfortably amidst such a backdrop. On the one hand, there is the unusual nature of its subject matter itself—though the spiritual undertones and poignant music are starkly dramatic, the narrative focus is interiorised and abstract rather than physical. All drama and beauty, all despair and fury, must correspond not with any physical altercation, but rather the passage of a man’s soul from life to death and his ultimate journey before God. To be sure, it is a theme rich with meaning and gravity; nevertheless, it is surely not a facile one to realise dramatically in music.
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Handel: Acis & Galatea/ Beck: Black Water
Co-Opera, Adelaide, 14th April 2012, Sandra Bowdler
Handel’s Acis and Galatea was first composed for and staged at Cannons, the stately home of the Duke of Chandos, a friend and patron of the composer, in 1718. Following pirate revivals in London in the 1830s, Handel himself presented a new extended version in 1732 in the King’s Theatre in London. This contained some new characters beyond the original five (Acis, Galatea, Polyphemus, Damon, Coridon), and new material, including Italian arias. Further revisions ensued, mostly in this bilingual form, but the 5th edition published in 1743 represents the work almost as we know it today.
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Massenet: Manon
Metropolitan Opera, New York, 7th April 2012, Dominic Wells
It is almost exactly five years that Anna Netrebko took on the role of Manon in Berlin (April 2007), where she was partnered by long-term collaborator, Rolando Villazón – an account immortalised on DVD, conducted by Daniel Barenboim (DG, 2008). Despite being directed by Vincent Paterson – better known for his work with Madonna and other pop stars, and also responsible for Netrebko’s cringe-worthy debut DVD,The Woman, the Voice – that Berlin Manon, set in 1950s Hollywood, works very well both visually and aurally. Many no doubt objected to Manon presented as a pole-dancing Marilyn Monroe in Act IV, but the whole production reflected the egocentric nature of her character, even if it did border on exaggeration at times.
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Verdi: Requiem
Mariinsky at the Barbican, 4th April 2012, Stephen Jay-Taylor
There’s an art, clearly much-perfected in St. Petersburg, of making a little go a long way. When Verdi’s grand commemorative musical machine is mounted in London– which it is, with great regularity – you’ll usually find an orchestra of around 90-odd, plus a chorus of anything ranging from 120 to 240. But Valery Gergiev runs a tight ship back home and even more necessarily on tour; and so, both tonight and even more strikingly in last night’s infrastructurally remarkable Parsifal, the Mariinsky’s orchestra numbered no more than 70-odd (with just 46, as opposed to the standard 60, strings) and a chorus of less than 60, tout court. Closely grouped together on the Barbican platform as if huddling together for warmth, you could be forgiven for anticipating that the thinly-assembled forces would produce only a certain amount of sound and no more, at best hopefully gaining in inner-part clarity what they would inevitably lose in volume.
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Wagner: Parsifal
Mariinsky at the Barbican, 3rd April 2012, Mark Pullinger
Shorn of any directorial ‘Konzept’, concert performances of Wagner’s music dramas can focus on the real drama in the music. The key work in the Mariinsky’s Holy Week UK tour is, appropriately enough, Parsifal, whose Act III ends on Good Friday. The company’s publicity machine made much of their SACD recording in their promotions leading up to this performance at the Barbican. That recording was very well received in most quarters, although cast with some key non-Russian soloists – most notably René Pape’s Gurnemanz – so how would a roster of singers drawn entirely from the Mariinsky’s ranks fare in Wagner ‘sacred stage festival play’?
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Joan Rodgers & Roderick Williams
Wigmore Hall, 2nd April, John E de Wald
The tradition of German Lieder offers one of the archetypal evocations of Romanticism, that past sensibility wistfully suffused with the iconography of Caspar David Friedrich’s solitary adventurer standing boldly before nature, the lone hero consumed by love and an often semi-solipsistic sense of heightened personal emotion. Typically in the hands of the great composers granted voice tonight—Schumann, Brahms, Mahler, Wolf—this lends itself all too readily to a sense of life drawn from anguish, unrequited love, broken hearts, and worldly transience. Though this evening’s recital at the Wigmore Hall spoke to these emotions as all recitals grounded in this tradition must, it was buoyed by a singular sense of gentle humour and vibrancy.
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Verdi: Rigoletto
The Royal Opera, 30th March 2012, Stephen Jay-Taylor
The more McVicar shows I see, the more it forcibly strikes me that they are highly regarded not so much for their theatrical conviction or detailed direction, but for the simple reason that they are, for the most part, left in period, for the which relief it’s not so much a case of “much thanks” but of fawningly (and unspokenly) uncritical approval. “Oh, look! Rosenkavalier left in the Rococo! Adriana with actual crinolines! Thank God! No RegieRubbish here!” And it’s a view I both understand and have sympathy with. But – and you knew that was coming – you still have to look closely at the finished result, and ask whether a largely hands-off approach to the all-important matter of setting is actually successful. And here, I think, the vast majority of his stagings fail, visually drab and undifferentiated as so many of them are, based on only patchily effective unit-set designs, and with an almost uncanny inability to realise Act IV of any opera that actually has one (that of his Figaro is a visually incoherent mess; Faust no less so; that of his Aida – admittedly rubbish throughout – spectacularly fails at even the most basic story-telling level at the end; and Adriana’s Act IV is a narrative nonsense, with the important-to-the-plot absent soprano instead apparently having taken up fully-furnished residence backstage at the Comédie Française for all apparently to ignore).
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Mozart: Die Zauberflöte
Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, 27th March 2012, Mark Pullinger
Here was Rome at its gladiatorial worst. In Britain – or should that be just London – the only booing you’re likely to hear will be aimed at a director taking his/ her first night curtain call; the most recent – and controversial – being voiced at the new (to the Royal Opera) Rusalka. Similarly, Christof Loy’s production of Tristan und Isolde back in 2009 received vociferous boos from the expensive seats. Never before had I encountered it hurled towards a singer, until last night when Hulkar Sabirova’s ‘Der Hölle Rache’ was greeted with a barrage of booing, not from the ‘posh seats’ but from the Galleria and at decibels which made the recent Covent Garden dissenters appear tame by comparison.
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Handel: Riccardo Primo
London Handel Festival, 27th March 2012, Miranda Jackson
As a critic invited to the featured opera in the annual London Handel Festival hot from two excellent productions at the Wigmore Hall and Netherlands Opera I would expect to have to make allowances for young, inexperienced singers. At the Britten Theatre the LHF, in conjunction with the Royal College of Music, provide a showcase for the best of the young talent currently studying at the International Opera School. No less than eleven music coaches are credited in the programme for training these young singers in the refined art of singing opera seria. All those involved in coaching have every right to be proud: all the members of this young cast acquitted themselves admirably.
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Verdi: Falstaff
The Royal Opera, 15th May 2012, Mark Pullinger
‘All the world’s a jest’ quips Falstaff, kicking off the ‘devil of a fugue’ (to steal from Elgar) which concludes Verdi’s final opera as his characters are packed off to supper. They are no longer in conflict and class distinctions are (briefly?) forgotten in Robert Carsen’s outstanding new Royal Opera production as impoverished aristocracy and the ‘nouveau riche’ are united around the banqueting table. A fugue can be regarded as somewhat old-fashioned, like Falstaff’s concept of ‘honour’ expounded in Act I, but it provides a unifying resolution to the comic twists and turns in the Merry Wives’ bid to serve Sir John with his comeuppance. In this Golden Jubilee year, Carsen shunts the opera to the new Elizabethan age of the 1950s, an updating which works brilliantly, Brigitte Reiffenstuel’s tweeds and scarlet foxhunting jackets replacing traditional doublet and hose. I cannot remember the last time I enjoyed a new Royal Opera production quite so much.
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Juan Diego Flórez
Royal Albert Hall, 8th May 2012, Sebastian Petit
When it was announced that Juan Diego Flórez would give his next Rosenblatt recital at the Royal Albert Hall there were many who were quick to doubt his ability to fill the venue in either sense of the word. There are not many opera stars, even at Flórez’s level, who can fill the inhospitable cavern of the “Nation’s Village Hall”. Truth be told there were some empty seats but the house must have been well over three quarters full. One hopes that not too many of them were on a corporate junket and that Rosenblatt’s courage was rewarded.
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Puccini: Madam Butterfly
English National Opera, 8th May 2012, Mark Pullinger
Madam Butterfly is one of two operas virtually guaranteed to bring tears to the eyes of this traditionally stony-hearted critic (The Cunning Little Vixen is the other, should you be interested, so Glyndebourne should be on flood alert!). However, throughout this second ENO revival of Anthony Minghella’s classy staging, my tear ducts remained in a state of drought. Why? This is an incredibly stylish, glossy Butterfly, opulently costumed (Han Feng) against a largely bare stage, albeit sleek and lacquered. Michael Levine’s set has a steep rake creating a hill towards the rear over which most of the characters make their entrances and exits, often to spectacular visual effect. Acting is well directed (Sarah Tipple) and truthful; the singing, for the most part, excellent. This is, in short, a highly polished production, so why did it so utterly fail to move me?
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Rodgers: Carousel
Opera North, Leeds, 5th May 2012, Geoffrey Mogridge
The musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein may be too schmaltzy for some tastes but there's no denying their enduring appeal. Director Jo Davies whose production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore for Opera North did much to rehabilitate the piece has now taken on the famously weepy musical Carousel, arguably the schmaltziest of schmaltz - although in my book The Sound of Music would earn the palm by a whisker. And then there's the problem of THAT song - "You'll Never Walk Alone" - hijacked by Gerry and the Pacemakers back in 1963, adopted by Liverpool F.C soon afterwards and ever since then, just about the world's best loved anthem. Stephen Sondheim once said that Oklahoma (the partnership's first great success) is about a picnic whilst Carousel is about life and death - and one might add - a love that is lost.
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Glass: Einstein on the Beach
Barbican Theatre, 4th May 2012, Carla Finesilver
Two women sit at a desk, staring at us, motionless apart from their hands tracing quick rhythmic movements in the air. One is reciting poetry, the other interjecting a string of numbers, above a low-pitched organ hum. The woman reciting poetry is doing so in the pleasant but emotionally neutral tone of modern speech-synthesising software; the woman reciting numbers does so with humanity and expression in every one. Something is wrong: poetry woman starts to stutter – not a human stutter, but an android showing the first signs of malfunction. I don’t know what it means, but I’m gripped. And the performance proper hasn’t even begun yet.
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Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier
Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, 4th May 2012, Nicola Lischi
Incredibile dictu, Zubin Mehta had never conducted Der Rosenkavalier before this production that marked the inauguration of the 75th edition of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Truth be told, he was scheduled to open the 1989 Maggio with this opera, but became ill and was replaced by Jiri Kout. In any event, it is surprising – to say the least – that the 76 year old maestro, a pupil of Hans Swarowsky in Vienna, and who began his continued professional relationship with the Wiener Philharmoniker in the 1950s, had not tackled this seminal, extremely popular and quintessential Viennese opera. It was worth the long wait.
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Puccini: Tosca
Scottish Opera, Glasgow, 4th May 2012, Kelvin Holdsworth
Scottish Opera’s revival of Anthony Besch’s Tosca offers a rewarding evening, though not one without its problems. Vocally, this is a Tosca not to be missed. Unfortunately, most of the evening is marred by insensitive conducting and far too much noise from the pit.
The production itself has been a very successful one and surely owes the company no debts now. This is, believe it or not, the eighth time it has been revived and it has done more globetrotting than Scottish Opera productions usual manage, being seen as far afield as New Zealand and the USA. Such success is based on a solid, confident director who clearly knew what he was doing by updating the action to 1940s fascist Italy. It is immensely pleasing to look at and fits its shiny jackboots perfectly.
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Puccini: La bohème
The Royal Opera, 30th April 2012, Stephen Jay-Taylor
The most affecting moment in this, the 24th revival of John Copley’s 1974 staging, occurred after the performance had finished, during the curtain-calls, at the end of which Copley himself was ushered onto the stage, first for a solo bow, and then – with the curtains raised again – presented with an enormous decorated cake in celebration of his fifty years’ activity as a producer at Covent Garden. Tony Hall made an enthusiastic speech in appreciation of Copley’s achievements in the House, closely observed by a silent-but-present Antonio Pappano; and then the director himself rather reluctantly took the microphone to express both his gratitude and astonishment at this unexpected homage
Read more>>
Verdi: Falstaff
The Royal Opera, 15th May 2012, Mark Pullinger
‘All the world’s a jest’ quips Falstaff, kicking off the ‘devil of a fugue’ (to steal from Elgar) which concludes Verdi’s final opera as his characters are packed off to supper. They are no longer in conflict and class distinctions are (briefly?) forgotten in Robert Carsen’s outstanding new Royal Opera production as impoverished aristocracy and the ‘nouveau riche’ are united around the banqueting table. A fugue can be regarded as somewhat old-fashioned, like Falstaff’s concept of ‘honour’ expounded in Act I, but it provides a unifying resolution to the comic twists and turns in the Merry Wives’ bid to serve Sir John with his comeuppance. In this Golden Jubilee year, Carsen shunts the opera to the new Elizabethan age of the 1950s, an updating which works brilliantly, Brigitte Reiffenstuel’s tweeds and scarlet foxhunting jackets replacing traditional doublet and hose. I cannot remember the last time I enjoyed a new Royal Opera production quite so much.
Read more>>
Juan Diego Flórez
Royal Albert Hall, 8th May 2012, Sebastian Petit
When it was announced that Juan Diego Flórez would give his next Rosenblatt recital at the Royal Albert Hall there were many who were quick to doubt his ability to fill the venue in either sense of the word. There are not many opera stars, even at Flórez’s level, who can fill the inhospitable cavern of the “Nation’s Village Hall”. Truth be told there were some empty seats but the house must have been well over three quarters full. One hopes that not too many of them were on a corporate junket and that Rosenblatt’s courage was rewarded.
Read more>>
Puccini: Madam Butterfly
English National Opera, 8th May 2012, Mark Pullinger
Madam Butterfly is one of two operas virtually guaranteed to bring tears to the eyes of this traditionally stony-hearted critic (The Cunning Little Vixen is the other, should you be interested, so Glyndebourne should be on flood alert!). However, throughout this second ENO revival of Anthony Minghella’s classy staging, my tear ducts remained in a state of drought. Why? This is an incredibly stylish, glossy Butterfly, opulently costumed (Han Feng) against a largely bare stage, albeit sleek and lacquered. Michael Levine’s set has a steep rake creating a hill towards the rear over which most of the characters make their entrances and exits, often to spectacular visual effect. Acting is well directed (Sarah Tipple) and truthful; the singing, for the most part, excellent. This is, in short, a highly polished production, so why did it so utterly fail to move me?
Read more>>
Rodgers: Carousel
Opera North, Leeds, 5th May 2012, Geoffrey Mogridge
The musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein may be too schmaltzy for some tastes but there's no denying their enduring appeal. Director Jo Davies whose production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore for Opera North did much to rehabilitate the piece has now taken on the famously weepy musical Carousel, arguably the schmaltziest of schmaltz - although in my book The Sound of Music would earn the palm by a whisker. And then there's the problem of THAT song - "You'll Never Walk Alone" - hijacked by Gerry and the Pacemakers back in 1963, adopted by Liverpool F.C soon afterwards and ever since then, just about the world's best loved anthem. Stephen Sondheim once said that Oklahoma (the partnership's first great success) is about a picnic whilst Carousel is about life and death - and one might add - a love that is lost.
Read more>>
Glass: Einstein on the Beach
Barbican Theatre, 4th May 2012, Carla Finesilver
Two women sit at a desk, staring at us, motionless apart from their hands tracing quick rhythmic movements in the air. One is reciting poetry, the other interjecting a string of numbers, above a low-pitched organ hum. The woman reciting poetry is doing so in the pleasant but emotionally neutral tone of modern speech-synthesising software; the woman reciting numbers does so with humanity and expression in every one. Something is wrong: poetry woman starts to stutter – not a human stutter, but an android showing the first signs of malfunction. I don’t know what it means, but I’m gripped. And the performance proper hasn’t even begun yet.
Read more>>
Verdi: Falstaff
The Royal Opera, 15th May 2012, Mark Pullinger
‘All the world’s a jest’ quips Falstaff, kicking off the ‘devil of a fugue’ (to steal from Elgar) which concludes Verdi’s final opera as his characters are packed off to supper. They are no longer in conflict and class distinctions are (briefly?) forgotten in Robert Carsen’s outstanding new Royal Opera production as impoverished aristocracy and the ‘nouveau riche’ are united around the banqueting table. A fugue can be regarded as somewhat old-fashioned, like Falstaff’s concept of ‘honour’ expounded in Act I, but it provides a unifying resolution to the comic twists and turns in the Merry Wives’ bid to serve Sir John with his comeuppance. In this Golden Jubilee year, Carsen shunts the opera to the new Elizabethan age of the 1950s, an updating which works brilliantly, Brigitte Reiffenstuel’s tweeds and scarlet foxhunting jackets replacing traditional doublet and hose. I cannot remember the last time I enjoyed a new Royal Opera production quite so much.
Read more>>
Juan Diego Flórez
Royal Albert Hall, 8th May 2012, Sebastian Petit
When it was announced that Juan Diego Flórez would give his next Rosenblatt recital at the Royal Albert Hall there were many who were quick to doubt his ability to fill the venue in either sense of the word. There are not many opera stars, even at Flórez’s level, who can fill the inhospitable cavern of the “Nation’s Village Hall”. Truth be told there were some empty seats but the house must have been well over three quarters full. One hopes that not too many of them were on a corporate junket and that Rosenblatt’s courage was rewarded.
Read more>>
Puccini: Madam Butterfly
English National Opera, 8th May 2012, Mark Pullinger
Madam Butterfly is one of two operas virtually guaranteed to bring tears to the eyes of this traditionally stony-hearted critic (The Cunning Little Vixen is the other, should you be interested, so Glyndebourne should be on flood alert!). However, throughout this second ENO revival of Anthony Minghella’s classy staging, my tear ducts remained in a state of drought. Why? This is an incredibly stylish, glossy Butterfly, opulently costumed (Han Feng) against a largely bare stage, albeit sleek and lacquered. Michael Levine’s set has a steep rake creating a hill towards the rear over which most of the characters make their entrances and exits, often to spectacular visual effect. Acting is well directed (Sarah Tipple) and truthful; the singing, for the most part, excellent. This is, in short, a highly polished production, so why did it so utterly fail to move me?
Read more>>
Verdi: Falstaff
The Royal Opera, 15th May 2012, Mark Pullinger
‘All the world’s a jest’ quips Falstaff, kicking off the ‘devil of a fugue’ (to steal from Elgar) which concludes Verdi’s final opera as his characters are packed off to supper. They are no longer in conflict and class distinctions are (briefly?) forgotten in Robert Carsen’s outstanding new Royal Opera production as impoverished aristocracy and the ‘nouveau riche’ are united around the banqueting table. A fugue can be regarded as somewhat old-fashioned, like Falstaff’s concept of ‘honour’ expounded in Act I, but it provides a unifying resolution to the comic twists and turns in the Merry Wives’ bid to serve Sir John with his comeuppance. In this Golden Jubilee year, Carsen shunts the opera to the new Elizabethan age of the 1950s, an updating which works brilliantly, Brigitte Reiffenstuel’s tweeds and scarlet foxhunting jackets replacing traditional doublet and hose. I cannot remember the last time I enjoyed a new Royal Opera production quite so much.
Read more>>
announced that Juan Diego Flórez would give his next Rosenblatt recital at the Royal Albert Hall there were many who were quick to doubt his ability to fill the venue in either sense of the word. There are not many opera stars, even at Flórez’s level, who can fill the inhospitable cavern of the “Nation’s Village Hall”. Truth be told there were some empty seats but the house must have been well over three quarters full. One hopes that not too many of them were on a corporate junket and that Rosenblatt’s courage was rewarded.one of two operas virtually guaranteed to bring tears to the eyes of this traditionally stony-hearted critic (The Cunning Little Vixen is the other, should you be interested, so Glyndebourne should be on flood alert!). However, throughout this second ENO revival of Anthony Minghella’s classy staging, my tear ducts remained in a state of drought. Why? This is an incredibly stylish, glossy Butterfly, opulently costumed (Han Feng) against a largely bare stage, albeit sleek and lacquered. Michael Levine’s set has a steep rake creating a hill towards the rear over which most of the characters make their entrances and exits, often to spectacular visual effect. Acting is well directed (Sarah Tipple) and truthful; the singing, for the most part, excellent. This is, in short, a highly polished production, so why did it so utterly fail to move me?Rodgers: Carousel
Opera North, Leeds, 5th May 2012, Geoffrey Mogridge
The musicals of Rodgers and Hammerstein may be too schmaltzy for some tastes but there's no denying their enduring appeal. Director Jo Davies whose production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore for Opera North did much to rehabilitate the piece has now taken on the famously weepy musical Carousel, arguably the schmaltziest of schmaltz - although in my book The Sound of Music would earn the palm by a whisker. And then there's the problem of THAT song - "You'll Never Walk Alone" - hijacked by Gerry and the Pacemakers back in 1963, adopted by Liverpool F.C soon afterwards and ever since then, just about the world's best loved anthem. Stephen Sondheim once said that Oklahoma (the partnership's first great success) is about a picnic whilst Carousel is about life and death - and one might add - a love that is lost.
Read more>>
sit at a desk, staring at us, motionless apart from their hands tracing quick rhythmic movements in the air. One is reciting poetry, the other interjecting a string of numbers, above a low-pitched organ hum. The woman reciting poetry is doing so in the pleasant but emotionally neutral tone of modern speech-synthesising software; the woman reciting numbers does so with humanity and expression in every one. Something is wrong: poetry woman starts to stutter – not a human stutter, but an android showing the first signs of malfunction. I don’t know what it means, but I’m gripped. And the performance proper hasn’t even begun yet.Strauss: Der Rosenkavalier
Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, 4th May 2012, Nicola Lischi
Incredibile dictu, Zubin Mehta had never conducted Der Rosenkavalier before this production that marked the inauguration of the 75th edition of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Truth be told, he was scheduled to open the 1989 Maggio with this opera, but became ill and was replaced by Jiri Kout. In any event, it is surprising – to say the least – that the 76 year old maestro, a pupil of Hans Swarowsky in Vienna, and who began his continued professional relationship with the Wiener Philharmoniker in the 1950s, had not tackled this seminal, extremely popular and quintessential Viennese opera. It was worth the long wait.
Read more>>
Puccini: Tosca
Scottish Opera, Glasgow, 4th May 2012, Kelvin Holdsworth
Scottish Opera’s revival of Anthony Besch’s Tosca offers a rewarding evening, though not one without its problems. Vocally, this is a Tosca not to be missed. Unfortunately, most of the evening is marred by insensitive conducting and far too much noise from the pit.
The production itself has been a very successful one and surely owes the company no debts now. This is, believe it or not, the eighth time it has been revived and it has done more globetrotting than Scottish Opera productions usual manage, being seen as far afield as New Zealand and the USA. Such success is based on a solid, confident director who clearly knew what he was doing by updating the action to 1940s fascist Italy. It is immensely pleasing to look at and fits its shiny jackboots perfectly.
Read more>>
affecting moment in this, the 24th revival of John Copley’s 1974 staging, occurred after the performance had finished, during the curtain-calls, at the end of which Copley himself was ushered onto the stage, first for a solo bow, and then – with the curtains raised again – presented with an enormous decorated cake in celebration of his fifty years’ activity as a producer at Covent Garden. Tony Hall made an enthusiastic speech in appreciation of Copley’s achievements in the House, closely observed by a silent-but-present Antonio Pappano; and then the director himself rather reluctantly took the microphone to express both his gratitude and astonishment at this unexpected homage
Wagner: The Flying Dutchman
English National Opera, 28th April 2012, Faye Courtney
I have a great deal of empathy with the poor cursed Flying Dutchman. As I traipse around various British and European opera houses I feel doomed to never find a production of Wagner’s early masterpiece that remains truly faithful to the composer’s intentions. I’ve encountered sewing machines in the Covent Garden version, exercise bikes in Munich, a space station in Cardiff and twenty-four refrigerators in Stuttgart but never anything that truly gets to the essential heart of the piece. English National Opera’s interesting new modern dress production by Jonathan Kent is promising but flawed, although the show is redeemed by some magnificent singing and thrilling orchestral playing which ranks among the finest I’ve heard at the Coliseum.
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Mariusz Kwiecien: Slavic Heroes
Mark Pullinger
When the Bolshoi brought its controversial production of Yevgeny Onegin to London in 2010 with a Polish baritone in the title role, it seemed rather perverse, a bit like The Royal Opera touring Peter Grimes starring a French tenor. However, the Polish baritone in question was Mariusz Kwiecien, who has the requisite looks and vocal characteristics for the role and seems ready to claim the mantle of ideal interpreter from the shoulders of Dmitri Hvorostovsky. The smouldering Siberian included arias from Onegin on his debut disc, as does Kwiecien, but where Hvorostovsky paired Tchaikovsky with his trademark Verdi, Kwiecien has stayed closer to home with an inventive programme entitled Slavic Heroes.
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Puccini: Turandot
Teatro Carlo Felice di Genova, 22nd April 2012, Nicola Lischi
When this revival of Turandot was announced, there was considerable buzz generated by the debuts of two extremely popular (at least in Italy) sopranos, Daniela Dessì in the title role and Mariella Devia as Liù. The excitement was even greater considering that both are “local” glories, hailing from Liguria, the region of Genoa. While Mariella Devia dutifully reported and sang the part of the slave girl, Daniela Dessì communicated to the management of the Teatro Carlo Felice that she was not going to show up only days before the beginning of rehearsals. This time no indisposition was claimed. Simply, the soprano – as she herself said in an interview with the local paper – wished to follow her husband, tenor Fabio Armiliato, on a tour for the presentation of Woody Allen’s latest film, where Armiliato plays a starring role.
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ENO unveils 2012-13 season
ENO recently scooped two Olivier Awards (which doubtless tasted even sweeter for being held at the Royal Opera House): the Best New Opera Production for Rameau’s Castor and Pollux and the Outstanding Achievement in Opera award for ‘The Breadth and Diversity of the Artistic Programme’. That breadth and diversity is there in spades for the 2012-13 season, unveiled this morning at the Coliseum. Another bold, risk-taking season lies ahead, headed by two new works, ensuring this is no Mickey Mouse season!
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Handel: Cajo Fabricio
London Handel Festival, 20th April 2012, Miranda Jackson
Battling your way through torrential rain on a Friday night to endure no less than five hours on one of the most uncomfortable church pews in London with no refreshments provided and inadequate provision of lavatories may not sound like your idea of fun, but Ensemble Serse’s first performance of Hasse’s Cajo Fabricio since 1733 was one of the best events in this year’s London Handel Festival.
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Opera at the BBC Proms
The unveiling of the annual BBC Proms prospectus is always a cause for anticipation, even if, operatically, some of the key events have been open secrets for some time. Among the ‘known unknowns’ is Glyndebourne’s Le nozze di Figaro on 28th August. Conducted by Robin Ticciati, there’s a strong cast led by Vito Priante(Figaro), Lydia Teuscher (Susanna), Sally Matthews soprano (Countess Almaviva) and Audun Iversen (Almaviva). Dinner jackets and tiaras at the ready!
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Weber: Der Freischütz
Barbican, 19th April 2012, Stephen Jay-Taylor
As regular readers all know, I spend any amount of my time taking trips down memory lane: now I’m going to pack you off on one instead, and refer you back to my review of Weber’s opera as performed at last year’s Proms. In it, having given an overview of the miserable provision of the greatest pre-Wagnerian German opera on London’s stages, I had this to say:
“Now, of course, after what feels like an eternity of waiting, two Der Freischützes – at least in concert – come along (almost) at once, evidently the operatic equivalent of London buses. Well, perhaps not quite. When Sir Colin Davis conducts the piece next April as part of the LSO’s 2011/12 season at the Barbican, it will be with a seriously heavyweight Wagnerian cast – including Christine Brewer and Simon O’Neill in the leads – and, as written, in German, with the original spoken dialogue (the latter I am assuming: if instead we get the services of some smart-arse narrator, in any language, I will personally commit murder).”
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Donizetti: La fille du régiment
The Royal Opera, 17th April 2012, John E de Wald
La fille du régiment premiered in Paris at the Opera-Comique on 11 February 1840. Donizetti had by this point attained preeminence in France, inaugurated largely by the hugely successful premiere of Lucia di Lammermoor in 1837. The popularity of the Italian composer was such that Berlioz, in his predominantly dismissive review of the latter work, wrote: ‘One can no longer speak of the opera houses of Paris, but only of the opera houses of M. Donizetti.’ There is perhaps an element of irony in the ubiquity of Donizetti’s operas in the musical scene of the French capital, yet it is not terribly surprising that his buoyant melodies and virtuosic vocal writing became popular favourites with the public.
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Rihm: Jakob Lenz
English National Opera, 16th April 2012, Miranda Jackson
This was a night of high drama. Not only did the redoubtable Andrew Shore make not one but two attempts to drown himself, one within the opening bars of Wolfgang Rihm’s 1979 opera, Jakob Lenz, but we also saw his fantasy of the drowning of a child – a little too realistic for me. When I saw the Flower Maidens in Calixto Bieito’s Parsifal dressed as post-apocolyptic victims of abuse, sporting their fur coats and drawing on their silk underwear, bound with clingfilm and parcel tape, in bright red lipstick, I thought I’d seen it all. But at the first night of Jakob Lenz we witnessed a number of near-death experiences, not just the drowning child and Lenz’s suicide attempts, but Mr Shore slipping on the mud of Annemarie Woods’ set in his frenzy, several old ladies in the front row coming close to being gassed by dry ice and Suzy Cooper, playing the haunting focus of Lenz’s fantasies dicing with death as the elevated platform on which she danced flexed ominously on its ropes.
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Wagner: The Flying Dutchman
English National Opera, 28th April 2012, Faye Courtney
I have a great deal of empathy with the poor cursed Flying Dutchman. As I traipse around various British and European opera houses I feel doomed to never find a production of Wagner’s early masterpiece that remains truly faithful to the composer’s intentions. I’ve encountered sewing machines in the Covent Garden version, exercise bikes in Munich, a space station in Cardiff and twenty-four refrigerators in Stuttgart but never anything that truly gets to the essential heart of the piece. English National Opera’s interesting new modern dress production by Jonathan Kent is promising but flawed, although the show is redeemed by some magnificent singing and thrilling orchestral playing which ranks among the finest I’ve heard at the Coliseum.
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Mariusz Kwiecien: Slavic Heroes
Mark Pullinger
When the Bolshoi brought its controversial production of Yevgeny Onegin to London in 2010 with a Polish baritone in the title role, it seemed rather perverse, a bit like The Royal Opera touring Peter Grimes starring a French tenor. However, the Polish baritone in question was Mariusz Kwiecien, who has the requisite looks and vocal characteristics for the role and seems ready to claim the mantle of ideal interpreter from the shoulders of Dmitri Hvorostovsky. The smouldering Siberian included arias from Onegin on his debut disc, as does Kwiecien, but where Hvorostovsky paired Tchaikovsky with his trademark Verdi, Kwiecien has stayed closer to home with an inventive programme entitled Slavic Heroes.
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Puccini: Turandot
Teatro Carlo Felice di Genova, 22nd April 2012, Nicola Lischi
When this revival of Turandot was announced, there was considerable buzz generated by the debuts of two extremely popular (at least in Italy) sopranos, Daniela Dessì in the title role and Mariella Devia as Liù. The excitement was even greater considering that both are “local” glories, hailing from Liguria, the region of Genoa. While Mariella Devia dutifully reported and sang the part of the slave girl, Daniela Dessì communicated to the management of the Teatro Carlo Felice that she was not going to show up only days before the beginning of rehearsals. This time no indisposition was claimed. Simply, the soprano – as she herself said in an interview with the local paper – wished to follow her husband, tenor Fabio Armiliato, on a tour for the presentation of Woody Allen’s latest film, where Armiliato plays a starring role.
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Wagner: The Flying Dutchman
English National Opera, 28th April 2012, Faye Courtney
I have a great deal of empathy with the poor cursed Flying Dutchman. As I traipse around various British and European opera houses I feel doomed to never find a production of Wagner’s early masterpiece that remains truly faithful to the composer’s intentions. I’ve encountered sewing machines in the Covent Garden version, exercise bikes in Munich, a space station in Cardiff and twenty-four refrigerators in Stuttgart but never anything that truly gets to the essential heart of the piece. English National Opera’s interesting new modern dress production by Jonathan Kent is promising but flawed, although the show is redeemed by some magnificent singing and thrilling orchestral playing which ranks among the finest I’ve heard at the Coliseum.
Read more>>
Bolshoi brought its controversial production of Yevgeny Onegin to London in 2010 with a Polish baritone in the title role, it seemed rather perverse, a bit like The Royal Opera touring Peter Grimes starring a French tenor. However, the Polish baritone in question was Mariusz Kwiecien, who has the requisite looks and vocal characteristics for the role and seems ready to claim the mantle of ideal interpreter from the shoulders of Dmitri Hvorostovsky. The smouldering Siberian included arias from Onegin on his debut disc, as does Kwiecien, but where Hvorostovsky paired Tchaikovsky with his trademark Verdi, Kwiecien has stayed closer to home with an inventive programme entitled Slavic Heroes.revival of Turandot was announced, there was considerable buzz generated by the debuts of two extremely popular (at least in Italy) sopranos, Daniela Dessì in the title role and Mariella Devia as Liù. The excitement was even greater considering that both are “local” glories, hailing from Liguria, the region of Genoa. While Mariella Devia dutifully reported and sang the part of the slave girl, Daniela Dessì communicated to the management of the Teatro Carlo Felice that she was not going to show up only days before the beginning of rehearsals. This time no indisposition was claimed. Simply, the soprano – as she herself said in an interview with the local paper – wished to follow her husband, tenor Fabio Armiliato, on a tour for the presentation of Woody Allen’s latest film, where Armiliato plays a starring role.ENO unveils 2012-13 season
ENO recently scooped two Olivier Awards (which doubtless tasted even sweeter for being held at the Royal Opera House): the Best New Opera Production for Rameau’s Castor and Pollux and the Outstanding Achievement in Opera award for ‘The Breadth and Diversity of the Artistic Programme’. That breadth and diversity is there in spades for the 2012-13 season, unveiled this morning at the Coliseum. Another bold, risk-taking season lies ahead, headed by two new works, ensuring this is no Mickey Mouse season!
Read more>>
Handel: Cajo Fabricio
London Handel Festival, 20th April 2012, Miranda Jackson
Battling your way through torrential rain on a Friday night to endure no less than five hours on one of the most uncomfortable church pews in London with no refreshments provided and inadequate provision of lavatories may not sound like your idea of fun, but Ensemble Serse’s first performance of Hasse’s Cajo Fabricio since 1733 was one of the best events in this year’s London Handel Festival.
Read more>>
of the annual BBC Proms prospectus is always a cause for anticipation, even if, operatically, some of the key events have been open secrets for some time. Among the ‘known unknowns’ is Glyndebourne’s Le nozze di Figaro on 28th August. Conducted by Robin Ticciati, there’s a strong cast led by Vito Priante(Figaro), Lydia Teuscher (Susanna), Sally Matthews soprano (Countess Almaviva) and Audun Iversen (Almaviva). Dinner jackets and tiaras at the ready!
Weber: Der Freischütz
Barbican, 19th April 2012, Stephen Jay-Taylor
As regular readers all know, I spend any amount of my time taking trips down memory lane: now I’m going to pack you off on one instead, and refer you back to my review of Weber’s opera as performed at last year’s Proms. In it, having given an overview of the miserable provision of the greatest pre-Wagnerian German opera on London’s stages, I had this to say:
“Now, of course, after what feels like an eternity of waiting, two Der Freischützes – at least in concert – come along (almost) at once, evidently the operatic equivalent of London buses. Well, perhaps not quite. When Sir Colin Davis conducts the piece next April as part of the LSO’s 2011/12 season at the Barbican, it will be with a seriously heavyweight Wagnerian cast – including Christine Brewer and Simon O’Neill in the leads – and, as written, in German, with the original spoken dialogue (the latter I am assuming: if instead we get the services of some smart-arse narrator, in any language, I will personally commit murder).”
Read more>>
readers all know, I spend any amount of my time taking trips down memory lane: now I’m going to pack you off on one instead, and refer you back to my review of Weber’s opera as performed at last year’s Proms. In it, having given an overview of the miserable provision of the greatest pre-Wagnerian German opera on London’s stages, I had this to say:Donizetti: La fille du régiment
The Royal Opera, 17th April 2012, John E de Wald
La fille du régiment premiered in Paris at the Opera-Comique on 11 February 1840. Donizetti had by this point attained preeminence in France, inaugurated largely by the hugely successful premiere of Lucia di Lammermoor in 1837. The popularity of the Italian composer was such that Berlioz, in his predominantly dismissive review of the latter work, wrote: ‘One can no longer speak of the opera houses of Paris, but only of the opera houses of M. Donizetti.’ There is perhaps an element of irony in the ubiquity of Donizetti’s operas in the musical scene of the French capital, yet it is not terribly surprising that his buoyant melodies and virtuosic vocal writing became popular favourites with the public.
Read more>>
night of high drama. Not only did the redoubtable Andrew Shore make not one but two attempts to drown himself, one within the opening bars of Wolfgang Rihm’s 1979 opera, Jakob Lenz, but we also saw his fantasy of the drowning of a child – a little too realistic for me. When I saw the Flower Maidens in Calixto Bieito’s Parsifal dressed as post-apocolyptic victims of abuse, sporting their fur coats and drawing on their silk underwear, bound with clingfilm and parcel tape, in bright red lipstick, I thought I’d seen it all. But at the first night of Jakob Lenz we witnessed a number of near-death experiences, not just the drowning child and Lenz’s suicide attempts, but Mr Shore slipping on the mud of Annemarie Woods’ set in his frenzy, several old ladies in the front row coming close to being gassed by dry ice and Suzy Cooper, playing the haunting focus of Lenz’s fantasies dicing with death as the elevated platform on which she danced flexed ominously on its ropes.Verdi: La traviata
Metropolitan Opera, New York, 14th April 2012, Mark Pullinger
Willy Decker’s spare, modern staging of La traviata has graced the stages of Salzburg, Amsterdam and New York over the last eight years, with a number of leading sopranos assuming the role of Violetta. Last night, it was Natalie Dessay’s turn to don the iconic little red dress at the Met. It gives me no pleasure at all to report that it was extremely moving for all the wrong reasons.
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Elgar: The Dream of Gerontius
Barbican, 14th April 2012, John E de Wald
Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius is now firmly established in the English tradition of religious choral music. Yet Elgar was himself wary of labelling it an oratorio in the tradition of Handel or Mendelssohn; indeed, the work sits somewhat uncomfortably amidst such a backdrop. On the one hand, there is the unusual nature of its subject matter itself—though the spiritual undertones and poignant music are starkly dramatic, the narrative focus is interiorised and abstract rather than physical. All drama and beauty, all despair and fury, must correspond not with any physical altercation, but rather the passage of a man’s soul from life to death and his ultimate journey before God. To be sure, it is a theme rich with meaning and gravity; nevertheless, it is surely not a facile one to realise dramatically in music.
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Handel: Acis & Galatea/ Beck: Black Water
Co-Opera, Adelaide, 14th April 2012, Sandra Bowdler
Handel’s Acis and Galatea was first composed for and staged at Cannons, the stately home of the Duke of Chandos, a friend and patron of the composer, in 1718. Following pirate revivals in London in the 1830s, Handel himself presented a new extended version in 1732 in the King’s Theatre in London. This contained some new characters beyond the original five (Acis, Galatea, Polyphemus, Damon, Coridon), and new material, including Italian arias. Further revisions ensued, mostly in this bilingual form, but the 5th edition published in 1743 represents the work almost as we know it today.
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Massenet: Manon
Metropolitan Opera, New York, 7th April 2012, Dominic Wells
It is almost exactly five years that Anna Netrebko took on the role of Manon in Berlin (April 2007), where she was partnered by long-term collaborator, Rolando Villazón – an account immortalised on DVD, conducted by Daniel Barenboim (DG, 2008). Despite being directed by Vincent Paterson – better known for his work with Madonna and other pop stars, and also responsible for Netrebko’s cringe-worthy debut DVD,The Woman, the Voice – that Berlin Manon, set in 1950s Hollywood, works very well both visually and aurally. Many no doubt objected to Manon presented as a pole-dancing Marilyn Monroe in Act IV, but the whole production reflected the egocentric nature of her character, even if it did border on exaggeration at times.
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clearly much-perfected in St. Petersburg, of making a little go a long way. When Verdi’s grand commemorative musical machine is mounted in London– which it is, with great regularity – you’ll usually find an orchestra of around 90-odd, plus a chorus of anything ranging from 120 to 240. But Valery Gergiev runs a tight ship back home and even more necessarily on tour; and so, both tonight and even more strikingly in last night’s infrastructurally remarkable Parsifal, the Mariinsky’s orchestra numbered no more than 70-odd (with just 46, as opposed to the standard 60, strings) and a chorus of less than 60, tout court. Closely grouped together on the Barbican platform as if huddling together for warmth, you could be forgiven for anticipating that the thinly-assembled forces would produce only a certain amount of sound and no more, at best hopefully gaining in inner-part clarity what they would inevitably lose in volume.Wagner: Parsifal
Mariinsky at the Barbican, 3rd April 2012, Mark Pullinger
Shorn of any directorial ‘Konzept’, concert performances of Wagner’s music dramas can focus on the real drama in the music. The key work in the Mariinsky’s Holy Week UK tour is, appropriately enough, Parsifal, whose Act III ends on Good Friday. The company’s publicity machine made much of their SACD recording in their promotions leading up to this performance at the Barbican. That recording was very well received in most quarters, although cast with some key non-Russian soloists – most notably René Pape’s Gurnemanz – so how would a roster of singers drawn entirely from the Mariinsky’s ranks fare in Wagner ‘sacred stage festival play’?
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German Lieder offers one of the archetypal evocations of Romanticism, that past sensibility wistfully suffused with the iconography of Caspar David Friedrich’s solitary adventurer standing boldly before nature, the lone hero consumed by love and an often semi-solipsistic sense of heightened personal emotion. Typically in the hands of the great composers granted voice tonight—Schumann, Brahms, Mahler, Wolf—this lends itself all too readily to a sense of life drawn from anguish, unrequited love, broken hearts, and worldly transience. Though this evening’s recital at the Wigmore Hall spoke to these emotions as all recitals grounded in this tradition must, it was buoyed by a singular sense of gentle humour and vibrancy.Verdi: Rigoletto
The Royal Opera, 30th March 2012, Stephen Jay-Taylor
The more McVicar shows I see, the more it forcibly strikes me that they are highly regarded not so much for their theatrical conviction or detailed direction, but for the simple reason that they are, for the most part, left in period, for the which relief it’s not so much a case of “much thanks” but of fawningly (and unspokenly) uncritical approval. “Oh, look! Rosenkavalier left in the Rococo! Adriana with actual crinolines! Thank God! No RegieRubbish here!” And it’s a view I both understand and have sympathy with. But – and you knew that was coming – you still have to look closely at the finished result, and ask whether a largely hands-off approach to the all-important matter of setting is actually successful. And here, I think, the vast majority of his stagings fail, visually drab and undifferentiated as so many of them are, based on only patchily effective unit-set designs, and with an almost uncanny inability to realise Act IV of any opera that actually has one (that of his Figaro is a visually incoherent mess; Faust no less so; that of his Aida – admittedly rubbish throughout – spectacularly fails at even the most basic story-telling level at the end; and Adriana’s Act IV is a narrative nonsense, with the important-to-the-plot absent soprano instead apparently having taken up fully-furnished residence backstage at the Comédie Française for all apparently to ignore).
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gladiatorial worst. In Britain – or should that be just London – the only booing you’re likely to hear will be aimed at a director taking his/ her first night curtain call; the most recent – and controversial – being voiced at the new (to the Royal Opera) Rusalka. Similarly, Christof Loy’s production of Tristan und Isolde back in 2009 received vociferous boos from the expensive seats. Never before had I encountered it hurled towards a singer, until last night when Hulkar Sabirova’s ‘Der Hölle Rache’ was greeted with a barrage of booing, not from the ‘posh seats’ but from the Galleria and at decibels which made the recent Covent Garden dissenters appear tame by comparison.Handel: Riccardo Primo
London Handel Festival, 27th March 2012, Miranda Jackson
As a critic invited to the featured opera in the annual London Handel Festival hot from two excellent productions at the Wigmore Hall and Netherlands Opera I would expect to have to make allowances for young, inexperienced singers. At the Britten Theatre the LHF, in conjunction with the Royal College of Music, provide a showcase for the best of the young talent currently studying at the International Opera School. No less than eleven music coaches are credited in the programme for training these young singers in the refined art of singing opera seria. All those involved in coaching have every right to be proud: all the members of this young cast acquitted themselves admirably.
the role of Anna Bolena must be one of the most daunting tasks facing a bel canto soprano, not least one who could frequently have been labelled ‘bel can’t’ in this sort of repertoire. To have not one, but two productions mounted especially for you, in Vienna and New York of all places, and to have them both filmed for wider consumption across the globe, is to meet those challenges head on. Anna Netrebko has rarely convinced me in bel canto, apart from a memorably golden Giulietta at Covent Garden in 2009. Her technique has lacked clarity in its coloratura, allied to an absence of a recognisable trill. However, her Met Lucia and Elvira were both dramatically strong, making one suspect that Anna Bolena might just be the role for her to prove her critics (happily) wrong.
